Rescuing the Crew of Liberator 107

THE RESCUE of the LIBERATOR 107 CREW

When the World War II bomber lost power over the Grand Canyon the crew bailed out, touching off nightmarish rescue attempts We stand on the tip of Point Sublime and unroll our topographic maps. To the east, a September storm drops thin gray strings of rain into the Grand Canyon. Some 3,600 feet below us, lies the Tonto Plateau, the broad greenish platform that stretches three-fourths of the way down from Rim to river.

Near the Tonto's far edge sits our immediate destination, the cone-shaped hill marked No. 3921 on the topo map. Fellow hiker Dick Yetman and I have come to the Canyon's North Rim to hike the escape route of the crew of B-24 Liberator bomber No. 107, airmen whose rescue after 10 days in the Canyon shared newspaper space with the Normandy invasion of World War II.

Liberator 107 HAD BEEN AT 20,000 feet over northern Arizona when one of her engines started spewing fire. While the crew tried to put it out, all four engines conked out. It was 2 A.M., June 21, 1944. Two weeks earlier, the Normandy invasion had caught the Germans off guard. Allied bombers were pounding the Nazis into submission.

Arizona's skies were filled with airplanes as some 18 in-state training airfields shaped bomber crews and fighter pilots for the aircraft pouring from the nation's assembly lines. No. 107 was on a mission from Tonopah, Nevada, to Tucson with a crew of six. A combat crew on a Liberator was usually 10 men, but 107 was flying without her four gunners.

Her engines out, the heavy bomber had fallen to 12,000 feet, propellers windmilling uselessly, when the pilot ordered the crew to bail out. The navigator, bombardier, and flight engineer dropped through the bomb bay into a moonless night.

The copilot and radioman hesitated as the pilot worked to restart the engines. At about 8,000 feet, three of the engines roared to life, and No. 107 limped off to a safe landing at Kingman Army Air Field.

As he floated downward, the bombardier, 2nd Lt. Charles Goldblum, saw the lights of a distant town, which he later learned was Williams. "I watched those lights hoping they would help me in my directions when I landed. Suddenly they blinked out completely as if someone had drawn a blind over them." He knew then that he was falling into a "hole of some sort."

After a few minutes, Goldblum jerked upward as his chute caught on something, and he bounced along a rough stone wall. Feeling about in the blackness, he found a ledge and crawled up onto it, leaving his parachute harness buckled.

At first light, he could see that his chute had snagged the edge of a "great cliff, 1,200 feet above a river." Had he unbuckled his harness, the released tension might have pitched him off balance and over the edge. As morning brightened, Lieutenant Goldblum climbed up his parachute shroud lines to the top of the cliff. "Goldie" Goldblum was from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a basketball star and straight-A student at Westminster College. The landscape that greeted this city boy that morning must have seemed as alien as the surface of the moon.

He stood on the edge of a cactus-covered plateau. Beyond this platform, soared great red-layered cliffs, the most distant graywhite toward the top and capped with trees. Behind him yawned the precipice he had so nearly drifted over. To his right, a side canyon deepened across the plateau. In all directions, he saw cliffs and peaks of every shape, their faces blazing with early morning sun.

Those who experience dawn within it never forget how the Grand Canyon awakens the sun sliding over the edge, first lighting up only the highest east-facing cliffs and finally angling down into the depths. The young airman was seeing the world's most awe-inspiring canyon at its most impressive time of day.

In SEPTEMBER, 1990, YETMAN LEADS our way down a steep drainage off the west side of Point Sublime. We scramble through cliff rose and juniper on crumbling Kaibab limestone. "Bend-your-knees and don'tlean-back," I warn myself. My feet slide; I dump ungracefully on my pack. In a few minutes, Yetman takes a similar pratfall.

There will be no trail on this hike; this is a “Harvey says” route, so named for Dr. Harvey Butchart, the acknowledged dean of Grand Canyon off-trail hikers. Most discussions of Canyon routes start with, “Well, Harvey says. . . .

We plan to find the airmen's 1944 camp and climb out their escape route. Butchart, of course, has been there and has written of it in his three-volume Grand Canyon Treks. I also have a copy of his map and his letter detailing his routes down both arms of Tuna Creek.

We descend toward the saddle between the west branch of Tuna Creek, draining to the south, and Flint Creek, which drops off northwestward. Our route, down West Tuna Creek, had no part in the 1944 rescue, but Butchart says it is the easier way down. He calls the east arm, which we will follow going out, “more interesting.” I wonder how much more interesting a route I will be able to handle.

In the bed of Tuna Creek, we scramble over boulders and around catclaw acacia. If you get upset about scratches, this route would be no fun. At the redwall formation, we repeatedly leave the drainage to climb around vertical pour-offs.

About NOON, GOLDBLUM FOUND THE navigator, Flight Officer Maurice “Mo” Cruickshank, who had landed hard and was in pain from a badly broken foot. The two made their way down the right side of Tuna Creek to the Colorado River and They drank for the first time in some 30 hours. On June 22, their second day in the Canyon, Cruickshank and Goldblum slowly followed the river downstream. Cruickshank saw a man in a dark green sweater on a ridge above them and thought it was a member of a rescue party. It was Corp. Roy Embanks, the flight engineer of the disabled B-24. Embanks had landed safely and spread his chute out on the plateau, weighted with rocks per Army Air Corps regulation, to attract air searchers.

The trio tested the possibility of reaching safety on a log raft by pushing a tree trunk into the flood-swollen river. It thrashed endover-end, convincing them there would be no escape via the river.

About dusk on June 23, the sound of bomber engines echoed high above them. The three men decided their chances of being spotted would be better back up on the plateau, enough so to justify climbing up there without a way to carry water.

The next morning, June 24, they began the long torturous ascent up a side canyon. Struggling onto the plateau, they again heard bomber engines, and they saw smoke to the east where Embank's parachute was spread. With dwindling energy, they labored toward the smoke bomb only to find nothing but a blackened circle. Embanks was Catholic, Goldblum Jewish, and Cruickshank Protestant, and all three prayed for deliverance throughout the thirsty night.

The next morning, their prayers were answered when a B-24 came over at lowaltitude; a second plane dropped K rations and canteens wrapped in GI blankets. There also were orders: “Greetings! You are in the Grand Canyon. Do not leave your position until notified by message dropped from an Army airplane.” Subsequent drops delivered a two-way radio, food including 10 pounds of steak clothing, and the men's own Gl shoes. They had parachuted in high-altitude sheepskin jackets and pants and heavy rubber-soled flight boots. The drop containing Cruickshank's shoes drifted into the river, but replacement 9-B brogans were safely delivered.

A South Rim rescue party mounted on Fred Harvey Company mules set out carrying a Coast Guardsman, a four-inch linethrowing cannon, and a two-piece rescue boat. At the river, they would assemble the boat and ferry across using a rope fired over by the cannon. They brought three mules for the airmen.

The mule riders descended the Bright Angel Trail, then followed the Tonto Platform west to Hermit Creek. Below Hermit Rapids, they calculated the speed of the flood-swollen Colorado River and questioned the cannon's power to penetrate the granite of the opposite bank. The next morning, they abandoned the boat and started back to the South Rim.

Yetman AND I FILL OUR WATER BOTtles from the spring in Tuna Creek's west fork just above its junction with the east Branch. It supplies a dozen shallow pools on the polished streambed with mineral-laden water. Tree frog tadpoles and tiny worms populate the pools. I wonder how the 1944 airmen related to fauna in their water; probably they were too thirsty to care.

Rain sprinkles as we set up camp down-stream from the junction of Tuna Creek's arms and cook supper. I doze off under my ground cloth lean-to vowing to write to the Guinness Book of Records. Surely the three air-men must hold the record for the fastest live descent into the Canyon. What they covered in about 15 minutes has taken us a long day.

The next morning, carrying cameras and water bottles, we scramble up from Tuna Creek onto the Tonto Plateau. The platform that looks level from the Rim rolls when you are on it, dropping into small drainages then climbing the other side. We see two "pinkies," Grand Canyon pink rattlesnakes, Crotalis viridis abyssus. Sliding away, they rattle as cameras get too close.

We contour around the west side of Hill 3921. Almost immediately we see aluminum canteens on rocks at the Tonto's edge. There are 11 GI canteens, three still holding water. Out of curiosity, we sample the water; it tastes fine.

Among the rocks are other artifacts of the airmen's stay: cylindrical cargo tubes, flare shells, sterno stove cartridges, and a can marked "Life Raft Ration Candy Chewing Gum Vitamin Tablets." Long zippers are all that 47 year's wind and sun have spared of high-altitude flight suits.

On a flat nearby, we find the main camp-site. "Emergency Water" and K ration cans lie scattered about. Thick rubber flight-boot soles lie forlornly where they were discarded in favor of the airmen's brogans. We inventory the material and carefully leave each piece as it is. (The National Park Service has since removed the artifacts from this site.)

THE JUNE 29 NEWSPAPERS REPORTED

On the failure of the South Rim rescue and speculated on bringing in a helicopter or blimp from Wright Field, Ohio. They also mentioned that a new rescue party was starting from the North Rim. This was MacRae and Lawes.

Dr. Alan MacRae taught Old Testament history at a seminary in Delaware. He had hiked the Grand Canyon 14 times since 1922, and was honeymooning, backpacking with his new bride. He heard of the rescue on the Ribbon Falls telephone and immediately hiked back to the North Rim to volunteer his help.

At 56, Ranger Ed Lawes was a 20-year park service veteran. Newspapers said he had delivered horseback mail from Kanab, Utah, to Lees Ferry, Arizona, at the age of nine; he was a good man in the backcountry.

On the morning of June 28, Lawes and MacRae had left Grama Point down the east side of Tuna's east arm. Aerial observers reported a talus slope route through the redwall formation, usually the toughest vertical barrier from Rim to river. At the red-wall in late afternoon, the climbers found a 150-foot drop, far beyond the reach of their ropes.

Seeing a bright-green spot above the red-wall on the opposite side, they backtracked and reached a spring just before dark. They camped and in the morning found a fine break through the redwall. That noon they strode into the airmen's well-supplied camp. Breaking the tension of that first moment, Lawes quipped, "You boys sure are suffering in comfort."

Goldblum radioed news of the rescuers' arrival. Since no one wanted to carry out the 50-pound radio, this was their last transmission. The next day, June 30, at 12:45 Р.М., the five scrambled up onto Grama Point to a waiting crowd of newspaper and radio re-porters, photographers, military brass, and park service officials. They had spent 10 days below the Rim.

at the airmen's camp. Yetman and I retreat to Tuna Creek where we pick up our packs and start the long climb out. East Tuna is typical of Grand Canyon off-trail drainage routes: Boulders choke low pour-offs so that you continually scramble up and over. The hike takes more horsepower than finesse.

A RAINSTORM CUTS SHORT OUR STAY AT

the airmen's camp. Yetman and I retreat to Tuna Creek where we pick up our packs and start the long climb out. East Tuna is typical of Grand Canyon off-trail drainage routes: Boulders choke low pour-offs so that you continually scramble up and over. The hike takes more horsepower than finesse.

At the base of the redwall, we locate what appears to be a break and start up. This is not technical climbing with ropes and hardware. My light rope is only for pulling packs up behind us. Yetman is a strong scrambler; he leads the way up a series of nearly vertical slopes and breaks in the cliff. By 6 P.M. we are camped above the redwall.

Rain blows into my shelter this night and wakes me. I wonder why we haven't seen the old ropes that Harvey Butchart reported on the redwall break. Perhaps our route was slightly different than his. My legs ache, and I think of how Cruickshank's broken foot must have felt going up this stuff.

At noon we top the Kaibab limestone and follow a deer trail back to Point Sub-lime Road. A 1944 photo shows the airmen and rescuers, together with Alan MacRae's bride, eating wieners, bread, and jam at a picnic table. Our celebration will be Mexican food in Flagstaff.

Afterword:

Charles Goldblum, Maurice Cruickshank, and Roy Embanks were wined and dined at the South Rim's El Tovar Hotel; gave radio interviews to KTAR's Howard Pyle (who would become governor of Arizona); and appeared in the July 10, 1944, Time magazine. After 17-day furloughs, they re-turned to duty. Goldblum was assigned to a B-24 unit in the Philippines. In 1945 he was listed as missing in action. The other two airmen survived the war, but Embanks died in 1990. Mo Cruickshank lives in Alaska. He returned to the Grand Canyon in 1991 where he looked down into Tuna Creek from Point Sublime.

Additional Reading:

Grand Canyon Treks by Harvey Butchart. La Siesta Press. V. I., 1970; V. II, 1975; V. III, 1984.