When Bill Bruce felt the pull of the sinking airplane on his leggin, he knew that he had to do some fast moving and some faster thinking to escape being dragged to the bottom of the ocean. He was submerged before he knew it. His only salvation lay in his ability to release himself from the leggin or in the cloth band breaking. In the meantime he was going farther and farther beneath the water’s surface.
It suddenly occurred to him that he might be able to unwrap the leggin by rotating his foot about the taut part extending upward from the plane. This procedure proved to be a success and in a few seconds he emerged. When his head came above the water he coughed and spit until he got rid of most of the salt water which he had swallowed. He had not been under the water long, but it seemed much, yes, very much longer than it actually was. He had been through a terrible ordeal and his escape had been a narrow one.
When Bill had brushed the salt water from his eyes, he looked around and saw the tug with its small boat standing near by. He swam to the small boat and was taken aboard. In a few minutes they were back on the tug and headed for the target.
“I want to pick up that target again,” said Lieutenant Small, the Artillery officer in charge of the tug. “If you are all in, however, I will head into the harbor and dock. If you can wait for a while, I will pick up the target and cable and then we will steam back to the dock.”
“I can wait for a while,” said Bill. “I am all right. I swallowed a lot of salt water, but that won’t hurt me any. How did you get to the plane so soon?”
“As soon as we saw your plane going down, I knew that something was wrong,” said Small. “Ordinarily you fellows don’t get down that low while you are out here. Then when you kept on going down, I told the crew to cut the target cable. They hacked it off with an axe and we went full steam ahead for the spot where you hit the water.”
“It’s lucky that you did, too,” replied Bill. “I was under the impression that a land plane would stay afloat for about four hours, but I know now that it won’t when it is damaged when it hits the water. That old bus did not float more than thirty minutes, if that long.”
“We timed it,” said Small. “It was just twenty minutes after you hit that we launched the small boat. Eight minutes later the plane was out of sight. I figure out that twenty-eight minutes covers the entire time that it was afloat.”