CRASH IN HIMALAYAS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25238, 29 May 1943, Page 5

CRASH IN HIMALAYAS

A REMARKABLE ESCAPE (Rec. 7 p.m.) NEW DELHI, May 27. One of the War’s most remarkable escape stories was told when two Americans, Captain Rosbert, of Seattle, and Captain Hammel, of Philadelphia, reached an Assam airbase after having been given up for lost 'while flying supplies to China. They encountered a storm over the Himalayas and turned back when their windshield f became coated with five inches of ice. Buffeted by a gale, they flew blind through thick cloud and crashed into a mountainside. The Chinese radio operator was killed outright and Captain Ros r bert broke his ankle, and Captain Hammers ankle was sprained. ' We were on the top of a /snowfield on a 14,000-foot mountain,” said Captain Rosbert, “and for five days sat wrapped .in our parachutes until we were well enough to move.- It was below zero all the time. On the sixth day food was running low, and so we tore a plank from the plane and worked our way to the edge of the mountain and started to slide down the slope at 30 miles an hour. We reached the tree-line and huddled together in a cave for the night. Next day we hobbled along gorges and over precipitous rocks. We found some dead birds and ate them raw. “On the eighth day,” he continued, “we came to a mountain hut where natives gave us maize. We lived there for weeks, nursing our injuries. Then the head man told us a British survey party was four days’ journey away. We sent a note to the party and were picked up. For over a fortnight we went with the party, sliding over gorges on cables, and negotiating mountain shelves *on the backs of natives.” Captain Rosbert and Captain Hammel had been missing for 46 days when they reached the air base. '