[Milsurplus] Rickenbacker & The Raft

[Hue Miller]

Eddie Rickenbacker, founder of Eastern Airlines, was sent by Sec'y of
War, H. Stimson, to the Pacific war theater, to evaluate air operations equipment
and personnel in 1943. On the the flight from Honolulu to Canton Island, the
B-17 he was on became lost and had to ditch. The eight men aboard managed
to remove 3 liferafts, fishing equipment, and rations from the sinking aircraft.
Seven of them survived the next 22 days at sea, in good part due to 
Rickenbacker's strict rules and forced optimism.
What puzzles me is nowhere in this account is there any word about a 
survival radio, Gibson Girl, BC-778. This was a long overwater flight, so
the ship should have had one on board. Maybe they didn't have time to
fetch it out? I don't recall that anywhere in the book "The Raft", is this point
addressed.  One of the rafts eventually made it to a  (normally?? ) 
"uninhabited island"  where there was a "missionary" with a radio. ( Really
a coastwatcher? ). But by this time one of the rafts had already been rescued,
so again radio was not instrumental in the rescue. Even a vhf radio would have
been useful, as several search planes were seen by them but failed to see them.
It seems they did not have signal mirrors either?
After rescue Rickenbacker suggested some addtions to the survival kit. I wonder
those suggestions included a radio. -Hue Miller