The minute a plane ditched in the ocean, a clock started ticking - and it ticked fast. They were young, but not frivolous. They were battle hardened pilots, but not without soft spots in their hearts for home. They were scared, but not without courage. Presenting the true, never-before-published stories of American pilots and airmen shot down in WWII combat and now lost in the ocean struggling to survive until their rescuers arrived. Each story is told by the men themselves, pilots and airmen who came to the Pacific eager to hunt Japs and end the war. But then they were shot down and now they were alone - lost at sea - facing an unrelenting sun and storm tossed waves The trick, they say, was to survive. One pilot spent 20 days in a small raft and survived by eating the partially digested fish he cut out of the stomach of an albatross.

One pilot landed on an island and was picked up by native guerillas and had to blow up a Japanese bridge on his way out. Another narrowly escaped the attack of an alligator, another survived alone at night bobbing in the ocean with only his head above the water. These are the incredible-but-true stories of survival in the Pacific told by the young men of our Greatest Generation. They are inspiring, harrowing, but also laced with honor and duty. Indeed, even after their incredible ordeals, when they got back to their units, they had but one request. To get back into the air. But first, they sat down and wrote these accounts. "I was inspired to create this book partly by Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken, and partly by the stunning images in the movie "Life of Pi.

" When I found these first person accounts I realized that both of these incredible stories had come to life in new and unexpected ways." L. Douglas Keeney Author The Lights of Mankind.