Book Review: We Thought We Heard the Angels Sing

Title: We Thought We Heard the Angels Sing

Author: James C. Whittaker

Date: 1943

Publisher: Dutton

ISBN: none

Length: 139 pages

Illustrations: maps, black-and-white drawings, some photos

Quote: “Rickenbacker's fate was a foregone conclusion to the average American because he remembered clearly the epic search five years previously for Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred J. Noonan, who were lost near the Phoenix Islands.”

But the average American was in for a pleasant surprise. Captain Eddie Rickenbacker and his crew were found. They spent three weeks drifting on the ocean on rafts, starving, dehydrating, barely surviving on raw fish and rain water, but all but one survived.

Despite wartime restrictions on printing, a nation that had prematurely mourned the loss of seven brave “Air Corps” men (plus Sergeant Alex Kaczmarczyk, who really was lost) demanded the story of Whittaker, Rickenbacker, Captain William Cherry, Second Lieutenant John DeAngelis, Staff Sergeant James Reymonds, Private John Bartek, and Colonel Hans Adamson.

The eight men packed into three small rafts. The two full-size rafts measured about 30x66” inside, optimistically advertised as room for five men, but in practice three men, “not regarded as big,” felt that they were “wrapping ourselves around one another.” DeAngelis and Kaczmarczyk got the smaller raft, which seemed “too small for one.” The two men in this “doughnut” raft took a few extra dips and Kaczmarczyk, who had been released from hospital just before this adventure began, was unable to get back into the raft after his last spill; that night he died.

Whittaker describes a lot of newly awakened religious feeling among the survivors, and some delirious dreams; he reports dreaming of “Davy Jones,” the mythical sea spirit, and of being back in the United States. He kept a log describing how the survivors suffered from each day's weather. After three weeks, when they came to an island, they were skeletal, barely able to walk—but they did walk. Bed rest for hospital observation came later.

What I have is the second edition of a book that sold fast. “First printing...March 1943. Second printing...March 1943.” Whittaker's amazing narrative may be (as all good war stories are) mostly true, but its facts are true enough to make it a valuable survival story even today.

It's not exactly an evangelical book, but enough prayers are said, texts quoted, and hymns sung by men contemplating the hereafter to qualify this one as a Sunday Book. 

And a 1943 copy is definitely a collector's item by now...this web site can't guarantee either a hardcover copy or a 1943 copy, even for $20 per book, $5 per package, plus $1 per online payment. If you must have a copy printed before the end of the war, be prepared to pay more. For now this web site will say $25 by U.S. postal money order to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322, or $26 by Paypal to the address you get by e-mailing salolianigodagewi that you're interested in this book, and you will receive a clean copy, in good condition, of whichever edition is available at the time. But you can probably add at least three more books of this size to one $5 package.