Article May 31, 1999 Issue

Safe in the midst of danger

World War II pilot averts crash

By Robert Earl McFall

ONE OF MANY wonderful instances of divine guidance and protection that I experienced during World War II had a profound and lasting effect on my life. Flying with the 16th Combat Cargo Squadron in India, Burma, and China, I piloted a C-46, which was one of the largest twin-engined planes made at the time. Our mission was to transport supplies to the British Army from bases in India to the front line landing strips in Burma.

Thanks to the Christian Science instruction I had received prior to going overseas as a young pilot, I flew with a Bible in one pocket of my flight jacket and a copy of Science and Health in the other. They were used regularly. On this particular day, after we had delivered our load of supplies to a field in Burma, a British officer asked me if I would haul a planeload of British soldiers back to India on our return trip. I agreed, and it was late afternoon when we took off with a full load of soldiers and their equipment.

As we were flying over the vast jungle of Burma, between two ranges of mountains, an engine caught fire. We were able to extinguish the fire, but the resulting technical problems made it impossible to maintain altitude. Eventually we were in the treetops, with the impenetrable Burmese jungle stretching for hundreds of miles in all directions. As limbs scratched against the metal fuselage, I instructed my radio operator to send our final position report to home base in India, informing them that a crash into the jungle was imminent.

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