HEROES: Durable Man

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Many of his customers railed at him for making them sit three abreast on his Constellations and using DC-35 on runs which they felt deserved better service.

But Eastern expanded steadily, from 22 planes, 923 employees, and 3,692 route miles in 1937 to 90 planes, 7,778 employees, and 9,930 miles today. It developed an admirable safety record. And, to the horror of the industry (which not only had to endure the ignominy of loss, but listen to Rickenbacker crow), he made profits every year. In 1947, when other lines lost a record total of $20 million. Eastern made $1,300,000. A fortnight ago he happily announced that it had made $1,968,000 in 1949) Eastern's fifteenth successive year in the black.

But in 1941, Rickenbacker's airline almost killed him.

Death in the Night. One overcast night in February, aboard a regularly scheduled DC-3 which was making its approach to Atlanta, he looked out of a window and saw automobile lights so shockingly close that he felt he could touch them. A few seconds later, as he bawled at passengers to get to the rear of the cabin, the big ship smashed into a hill with a doomlike roar. When silence fell, Rickenbacker was pinned down over the body of a dead steward by the weight of wreckage.

He stayed conscious all night although he had a shattered pelvic bone, half a dozen broken ribs and a broken leg; one eyelid had virtually been torn away. Gasoline dripped steadily. He called reassurance to the living (seven were dead), sent some of the walking injured for help, and yelled warnings against lighting matches. When he got to a hospital, nine hours after the crash, he felt a familiar languor—what he calls the "warm, soft sensation of death."

Then he heard the radio voice of Walter Winchell announcing that he was dying.

He says: "I began to fight. They had me under an oxygen tent. I tore it apart and picked up a pitcher. I heaved it at the radio and scored a direct hit. The radio flew apart and Winchell's voice stopped. Then I got well." Sixteen months later, at the request of his old friend General "Hap" Arnold, he went off on an inspection tour of World War II air bases in the Pacific, and found himself face to face with death once more.

Twelve hours after leaving Honolulu he was strapped into a seat in a lost B-iy, staring out of a porthole at the ocean coming closer, and yelling, "Fifteen feet ... ten feet . . . five feet . . ." as its pilot strained to ditch the Bi; in the trough between two long swells. The plane hit like a car running into a stone wall. Water cascaded in. In two minutes, the plane's eight dazed and bleeding men were afloat on tiny rubber rafts under a brazen sky.

For 22 days he was the flotilla's Captain Bligh. The pilot, 27-year-old Captain William Cherry, was in command, and Rick-enbacker's friend, Colonel Hans Christian Adamson, 52, was the ranking officer. But the old warbird—dressed in a grey felt hat, business suit, shirt, tie and high-laced shoes—gave orders.