Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "Eddie Rickenbacker's Raft, an Updated History Guy Episode" video.

  1. The training film "Ditch and Live" was made because so many crews forced down over water were dying only after three or four days on a raft. Realizing this, the Army Air Force had their film unit produce a training film starring Arthur Kennedy as Captain Scott H Reynolds. After a previous ditching where he was the sole survivor when the rest of his crew died at sea, he decided to train his new crew mercilessly in ditching procedures and survival techniques. As bad luck would have it, Captain Reynolds and his crew were forced down at sea and were able to put their training to good use. There was one scene where the men were rolled out of bed at 3:00 in the moring to practice on a derelict B-17 so the men would be used to having to ditch in the dark. Several of the men, while getting dressed to head out to the plane, remarked that they'd live longer than Reynolds if they ditched just so they could throw him in the dunk tank when they got back to base. This was an obvious play on what Rickenbacker's crew said about him. He later found out about what the men had said. In reality, it was more like they wanted to live so they could kill him. The producers, not being sure of Rickenbacker's reaction, showed him the script with the more sanitized version of what the crew had said. He approved it without comment. Many of the survival procedures were adapted from Rickenbacker's harrowing experience, and he contributes=d to the script. It became mandatory viewing for bomber crews, and the amount of time men lived at sea more than doubled for crews that had seen the film. Rickenbacker's experiences helped many more men than just the crew he went down with.
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