Other Tink just posted about the heroic Southwest Airlines pilot with nerves of steel who brought her badly damaged plane down safely, and then I remembered the U.S.S. Indianapolis. It was the end of WWII, and the ship was chugging home from Japan after delivering some supplies for the atomic bomb.
Got spotted by an intrepid Japanese submarine captain, who torpedoed and sank the Indianapolis, leaving 370 crewmen in shark-infested waters. No one even knew the Indianapolis was in trouble until four days later, when a reconnaissance plane saw the wreck and the sharks. They sent out a pontoon plane, but then ordered the pilot not to land because the water was too stormy and choppy.
But the pontoon pilot disobeyed his orders, landed his plane on the ocean anyway. The plane got too badly damaged to take off again, but the pilot pulled people into his plane and then strung parachutes from the wings somehow, so more people could get away from the sharks. Then everybody just sat there until they could send more help, and the pilot saved the lives of about 100 crewmen.
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Much later, someone found that story and began going around to schools and communities to tell the story of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, and just last week they came to Chehalis, WA, about twenty miles from where I live. They brought along one of the few remaining survivors, who is now 93 years old.
I just sat there and cried.