Horace Bristol was one of six photographers recruited by Edward Steichen, director of the U.S. Navy Photographic Institute, to chronicle life and operations within naval aviation units in the Pacific Theater of World War II. On 20 February 1944, Bristol was on board a patrol bomber, or ‘PBY,’ that was conducting search and rescue operations for airmen shot down while bombing the enemy stronghold of Rabaul, Papua New Guinea.
Bristol’s photographs capture the high stakes of the PBY’s two successful missions that day. The first, uneventful except for heavy seas, was the rescue of an entire B-25 crew of six from their survival raft.
A few hours later, in Bristol’s words, “. . .we got a call to pick up a Marine pilot who was down in the Bay. The Japanese were shooting at him from the island, and when they saw us, they started shooting at us. The pilot was temporarily blinded, so one of our crew stripped off his clothes and jumped in to bring him aboard. He couldn’t have swum very well wearing his boots and clothes. As soon as we could, we took off. We weren’t waiting around for anybody to put on formal clothes. We were being shot at and wanted to get the hell out of there. The naked young man got back into position at his machine gun in the rear blister of the plane.” Bristol regarded the gunner’s actions as the single bravest act he witnessed during the war.
Titles include:
Rescue at Sea, PBY Blister Gunner
Bandaging wounded pilot in PBY
Looking for shrapnel
Pulling Life Raft Towards PBY
Rescue at Rabaul, Crew of Downed Plane Board PBY - gunner of PBY helps crew of downed bomber
Untitled (rescue from back of plane)
Untitled (stretcher transfer)
