Chronicle Commentary: May 15, 1941
On this day, 9,040 baseball fans suffered through a difficult game at Yankee Stadium as the Chicago White Sox trounced the Yankees 13-1, but they witnessed something spectacular. In the bottom half of the first inning, center fielder Joe DiMaggio singled to left field for his only hit of the day, scoring Phil Rizzuto.
Although no one knew the significance of that hit, those disappointed fans would later realize they were there when Joe DiMaggio’s legendary 56-game hitting streak began. DiMaggio spent most of the war playing baseball stateside in the Army Air Forces before transferring to Hawaii as a supply sergeant in the Seventh Air Force, where he also played baseball. Smith also served in the Army and Rizzuto served in the Navy in the Pacific Theater.
Meanwhile to the east of San Diego, Calif., a Marine officer was in one heck of a tight spot. Serving as jumpmaster for a group of Marine parachutists, 2nd Lt. Walter S. Osipoff (featured image) had just sent 11 parachutists out the door and was about to join them when the Marines’ bundle of weapons and ammunition snagged Osipoff’s ripcord, sending his parachute out the door and pulling the Marine out of the R2D-1 transport (a Douglas DC-2). The weight of the 150-lb. cargo pack ripped open his left arm and shoulder before the lines tore away from Osipoff.
His parachute was destroyed and Osipoff was dangling upside-down from his lines 100 feet from the aircraft. The crew had no way of pulling the Marine back on board and there was no radio on the aircraft to alert the ground about the officer’s predicament. As the Douglas circled slowly over North Island’s naval air station, Navy Lt. William W. Lowrey spotted the dangling Marine and ordered Aviation Chief Machinist’s Mate John R. McCants to fuel up a SOC Seagull biplane for a daring rescue attempt before the Marine perished.
From HistoryNet:
[…] racing to his aircraft, [Lowrey] took off with McCants in the rear cockpit. Pacing the R2D-1, Lowrey maneuvered the Seagull up beneath Osipoff, but twice the wind dragged the Marine across the biplane’s wing.
At 3,000 feet Lowrey tried another pass as McCants stood in the rear cockpit. Working the biplane up, Lowrey got close enough for McCants to grab the Marine. But Osipoff remained enmeshed in the lines, and McCants was unable get him into the small rear cockpit. So Osipoff lay on top of the fuselage with a death grip on McCants.
As McCants worked desperately to cut the lines before the planes drifted apart, a wind gust bucked the Seagull, its propeller chopping nearly a foot off the transport’s tail cone fairing. It turned out to be a piece of luck. When the biplane’s nose came up, Osipoff’s tangled lines drooped across its upper wing, and the propeller neatly severed them.
Though his plane was encumbered with shroud lines, a fouled rudder and the weight of an extra passenger, Lowrey was nonetheless able to bring in the Seagull for a safe landing at North Island.
Osipoff had endured 33 minutes of twirling helplessly in a 110 mph wind and had suffered severe cuts and bruises and a fractured vertebra. He spent three months in a body cast but eventually recovered and returned to jump status. By war’s end he had served in the Pacific, been awarded a Bronze Star and reached the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Bureau of Navigation Number 123 reports that Navy Secretary Frank Knox presented McCants and Lowrey with the Distinguished Flying Cross for their incredible rescue.
You can find an audio interview with Osipoff at https://californiarevealed.org/islandora/object/cavpp%3A14733.