TEMPORARY PAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 22, 27 January 1944, Page 5

TEMPORARY PAL

ALBATROSS'S ERROR

NEW GEORGIA,

A one-legged albatross, proverbial friend of mariners, tagged along with Lieutenant David Scott, American Hellcat pilot, for four of the eight days he was adrift on the Pacific in a liferaft. A short time ago, Lieutenant Scott was rescued from the sea after being spotted and reported by Royal New Zealand Air Force Ventura bombers. ~ . , "I called him Albert," said Lieutenant Scott. "He would sit on the edge of the boat and we got real pally. It s pretty lonely out there, with only the sea and sky, and it was good to have something to talk to, even if he couldn't talk back." ' Albert and the airman met on the latter's first night at sea. It was after an. Allied fighter sweep over Rabaul: the American saw a Zero go down to his guns, and was "jumped", by other Zeros and forced to land his damaged aircraft in St. George's Channel. "That night," he recounted, something woke me, and a few feet away I saw a dark shape moving towards the boat. Earlier I had seen a couple of sharks and I got my revolver ready to shoot. Then I discovered it to be a half-submerged log, with a onelegged bird sitting on it. Next day the albatross showed up, so I imagine it was the same one. He left me four days later, after a search plane had passed within a few hundred feet without seeing me. I guess he figured my chances were about through. Lieutenant Scott's chances .were hot through, but they went close to it. He had to survive a terrifying battle with a shark and a grim struggle to keep his battered dinghy afloat before he was sighted by New Zealand Venturas and finally picked up by a rescue aircraft, 196 hours, after he went into the "drink."