IN THE COLD, crisp spring air at 18,000 feet on March 30, 1945, First Lt. Dan Meyers suddenly found himself flying in a cloud, in an otherwise blue and completely cloudless sky. The mysterious fog was generated by the engine failure of his P-51D Mustang 44-72328. With the shore of Northern Germany behind, and the Frisian Islands beneath his port wing, Meyers was forced to bail out and take his chances with the uninviting mass of the North Sea. After checking that his dinghy and Mae West were in position, he pushed himself out into the biting slipstream, narrowly avoiding his Mustang’s tail. From under his chute, he watched his aircraft spiral down and crash into the heavy swell of the rough sea. When he too hit the water, the chilling waves swept over him in stark contrast to the smooth, crystal air moments before.
Returning from an uneventful bomber escort over Hamburg, his 42nd mission, Meyers’ survival was now at stake. Removing his parachute’s harness, he moved fast to deploy his dinghy. It inflated perfectly, but upside down. Hindered by his heavy, wet flying gear, with the cold clawing at him, he soon abandoned his exhausted attempts to right it. Clambering aboard the upturned dinghy, the lieutenant was concerned that his “Little Friends,” his fellow pilots from the 357th Fighter Group at Leiston, would no longer be able to see him. Keeping a watchful eye over him and their own fuel tanks, the P-51s had alerted the rescuers, but while an aircrew dinghy the right way up was bright yellow to aid in location, the underside was dark blue. Now a small indistinct speck in a large dark sea, Meyers later recounted, “Cold and alone, there wasn’t anything to do but watch the sky darken and wait to be rescued.”
Teamwork
With their regular aircraft Consolidated OA-10A
