Eight Survived : The Harrowing Story Of The USS Flier And The Only Downed World War II Submariners To Survive And Evade Capture

On the night of August 13, 1944, the U.S. submarine Flier struck a mine in the Sulu Sea in the southern Philippines as it steamed along the surface. All but fifteen of the more than eighty-strong crewwent down with the vessel. Of those left floating in the dark, eight survived by swimming for seventeen hours before washing ashore on an uninhabited island. The story of theFlier and its eight survivors is wholly unique in the annals of U.S. military history.Eight Survived tells the gripping story of the doomed submarine and its crew from its firstpatrol, during which it sank several enemy ships, to the explosion in the Sulu Sea. Drawing on interviews with the survivors and on a visit to the jungle where they washed ashorewhere a cast of fascinating characters helped the U.S. sailors evade the JapaneseDouglas Campbell fully captures the combination of extraordinary courage and luck that marked one of the most heroic episodes of World War II.