Word: rafts
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...picked up from a life raft, had several shrapnel wounds. When the hospital discharged him he "just wanted to get away from everything." But after a month, during which he was scared stiff whenever he rode on a public conveyance, he shipped on a 29-day coastwise trip. One night "I was in bed and it was the first [alarm] I heard since I was torpedoed, and I practically froze in my bed. I didn't want to get out. I was musclebound, you might say, for several seconds." After that trip, he was sent to the Long Island...
Water. As soon as possible after a ship is torpedoed, a lifeboat's or life raft's leader should count the survivors, compute the probable period before rescue and the prospects of rain, then ration the stock of water. The minimum daily ration should be 18 ounces until only one pint per man remains; after that each should be given two ounces daily. Lips can be moistened, the mouth rinsed with sea water, but "there is no doubt that large draughts of sea water cause death and even small amounts may prejudice a man's chance...
...another attacker got Widhelm's oil cooler. He put his plane in a tight corkscrew which no Zero could follow (Gus used to be a stunter), landed in the water and got into his rubber raft with Stokely...
They were almost smack in the middle of the Jap task force. Lieut. "Benny" Moore, his bald, bowlegged, Texas flight officer, led the others in, and Widhelm had to watch his attack theories from a raft. His main idea: the only way to escape anti-aircraft fire and yet make a hit is to start the dive higher than the books say, end it lower. On top of that, he would make the plane oscillate most of the way down so as not to be a fixed target...
First the Dorniers, then dive-bombers roar down for the kill, and Captain Kinross' ship goes down with more than half her crew. Then, while the Captain and a few sailors, covered with fuel oil and sprayed with machine-gun bullets, cling precariously to a raft in the scummy water, the camera flashes back to tell the whole story of the ship...