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291 Chapter 20 January 1945 The Gambler’s Paradox is a product of our tendency to see patterns in events. The gambler might make his wager based on a pattern he sees in the turn of a roulette wheel, just as a child might guess that the next coin flip will land heads because the last two were tails. But the patterns aren’t really there; the odds don’t change on each successive turn of the wheel or flip of the coin. Winning streaks in games of chance are illusions, and the loss that ends a streak is heartbreaking because the momentum of winning felt so real, it seemed bound to continue. On January 22, Lt. Charlie Pratte and his crew took the nameless B-24-J #42-109871 on a mine-laying mission to Chichi Jima, staging through Saipan. Pratte and his men were old timers, around as long as anyone in the squadron, averaging thirty missions per man. When Pratte’s crew went overseas, and before the rules were changed, thirty missions earned a ticket home. Scearce’s buddy Joe Hyson, radar operator on Pratte’s crew, was with them when they crashed the Navy’s dedication party at Mullinnix Field a year before, landing Belle of Texas with brakes out, no hydraulics and hundreds of flak and bullet holes, using parachutes to slow the plane. Pratte’s crew had its brush with death that day and survived, and since 292 Finish Forty and Home then they had a winning streak going. Nothing bad was supposed to happen to a crew like Charlie Pratte’s. Also on January 22, Japanese anti-aircraft gunners on Chichi Jima scored hits on an American four-engined bomber flying over the harbor and saw the plane begin to smoke and lose altitude. The plane crashed into the cliffs above Maruen Wan, a bay on the south side of Chichi Jima, and part of the plane fell to the beach below the cliffs.1 Scearce returned from a bombing mission to Iwo Jima and learned that Pratte’s plane was overdue. There had been no contact from Pratte by radio. Capt. Jordan Churchill sent two B-24s to search for them, and one reported sighting some smoke and a life raft nine hours after Pratte left Saipan. Col. Russell Waldron stepped up the search effort and ordered twenty-one B-24s to cover the area between Guam and Iwo Jima at 2,000 feet. Army and Navy aircraft from Saipan also looked for any sign of Pratte’s crew.2 On the twenty-fourth, Scearce’s crew and seven others from the 42nd were joined by two from the 26th for a night snooper mission. All ten planes got over Iwo Jima and most of their bombs hit the targeted runways. There were no searchlights and no anti-aircraft fire. The mission was unremarkable, forgettable, except that before “bombs away” men aboard the planes droning through the blackness over Iwo Jima that night saw things that put them on edge. All ten crews reported a fire on Iwo Jima’s southeast shore, a fire that started before any of their bombs fell. It was as if someone below heard the American planes approaching and wanted to signal them. Someone else on the flight saw a white flare, then a yellow one, but the flares arced and burned out and then there was nothing more to see. Could Pratte’s crew have ditched and reached Iwo Jima? The squadron was convinced there were survivors from Charlie Pratte’s crew and they desperately wanted something more to be done for them. January 1945 293 On Chichi Jima, Japanese Capt. Fumio Kudo sent a search party to investigate the wreck of the bomber shot down on January 22. His soldiers followed the beach to the site, but they could not reach the plane where it rested on the cliffs. They assumed the American flyers were dead; it seemed unlikely anyone could have survived such a violent crash.3 Two days later, the 42nd hit Iwo from 20,000 feet in daylight. From that altitude there was little opportunity to make observations and little hope that a downed airman could signal an aircraft. There was nothing more the lost airmen’s friends could do except go about their business and hope for the best. They imagined a clandestine mission; maybe by night a submarine or a fast patrol boat would pluck Pratte’s men from the...

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