The Prologue begins by introducing three of the book’s most important characters: Captain Bill Cherry, Lieutenant Jim Whittaker, and Colonel Eddie Rickenbacker. Cherry is the pilot and Whittaker is the co-pilot of a B-17 transport plane that gets lost in the Pacific Ocean. Initially intending to refuel on Canton Island, Cherry misses the island, and the plane begins to run out of fuel. The crew is forced to figure out how to crash-land the plane in the sea. Because the ocean is turbulent, the pilots determine that they must try to steer the plane into a “trough” between the waves (3).

Rickenbacker is a former racecar driver, fighter pilot, and World War I hero. As the owner of Eastern Air Lines, he survived a different aviation disaster when one of his own planes crashed into a forest in Georgia. Though he is elderly and walks with a cane, he is also active and dynamic. Before the B-17 transport plane crashes, he helps Sergeant Alex Kaczmarczyk, one of the plane’s engineers, soften the plane’s landing by throwing cargo down the plane’s hatch: “Out went the cots, tool kit, blankets, empty thermos bottles and luggage” (6).