What Happened Next?
What happened next was tragic. The mission went awry, and the plane took a nosedive in the middle of the Papa New Guinea Jungle. There was a group of nine people left, and they had an apparently unassailable task ahead of them: Find their way out of the jungle.
Photo by Wolfgang Kaehler/Light Rocket/Getty Images
With insurmountable odds stacked against them, they started their trek to safety, but the U.S. B-17E bomber was the baggage they left behind. The six-week journey through the jungle was an arduous test of their mettle, with malaria looming around, and the exhaustive heat eating their leftover stamina, but the soldiers managed to escape certain death.