Ordeal of Corporal Keene

High in the sky over the coast of Australia, the 131 1/2-ton Catalina flying boat suddenly twisted and dived. Zeros protecting a Jap cruiser were blazing away. The Catalina shook them off and straightened out.

Corporal Keene, flight engineer, picked up the interphone to speak to the pilot. When he got no reply, Keene climbed down from his high-hung, isolated engine compartment to see what the trouble was. First he saw the remains of the chief gunner. The others in the eight-man Australian crew slumped at their posts. Every one had been killed, struck by machine-gun bullets or cannon fire. Corporal Keene was glad to be alive, but he had never flown a plane.

"George," the automatic pilot, had been set by the human pilot before he died. The Catalina, her body riddled but her engines intact, drummed along through the sky. Keene had time to muse, stand around for "quite a while," open an after-hatch and gaze down 6,000 feet at the expanse of empty sea.

It was lucky for Keene that he did take his time. The pilotless Catalina began to drone over land. Keene did not know what land, but he did not care. He buckled on his parachute and bailed out over British New Guinea. Bush natives showed him the way to Port Moresby. The last he saw of the Catalina and her oblivious crew, she was flying steadily on.

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