Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker signed FDC, Ace 26 vic/ Medal of Honor

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I am offering a signed FDC signed by Capt. Edward Vernon Rickenbacker (October 8, 1890 – July 27, 1973) was an American fighter ace in World War I and Medal of Honor recipient. He was also a race car driver and automotive designer, a government consultant in military matters and a pioneer in air transportation , particularly as the longtime head of Eastern Air Lines . Adrift at sea One of Rickenbacker's most famous near-death experiences occurred in October 1942. He was sent on a tour of the Pacific Theater of Operations to review both living conditions and military operations, and also to deliver personally a secret message to General Douglas MacArthur from the President. After visiting several air and sea bases in Hawaii , Rickenbacker was a passenger in the B-17D Flying Fortress numbered 40-3089 , which strayed hundreds of miles off course while on its way to a refueling stop on Canton Island in the Central Pacific Ocean . The B-17 was forced to ditch in a remote and little-traveled part of the Central Pacific.The failure in navigation has been ascribed to an out-of-adjustment celestial navigation instrument, a bubble octant , that gave a systematic bias t o all of its readings. That octant reportedly had suffered a severe shock in a pre- takeoff mishap. This unnecessary ditching spurred on the development of improve d navigational instruments and also better survival gear f or the aircrewmen. The B-17's pilot-in-command, Captain William T. Cherry, Jr., was forced to ditch his B-17 in the Pacific Ocean , rather close to Japanese -held islands, also. However, the Americans were never spotted by Japanese patrol planes , an d they were to drift on the ocean for thousands of miles.For 24 days, Rickenbacker, the Army captain Hans C. Adamson, his friend and business partner, and the rest of the crewmen drifted in life rafts at sea. Rickenbacker was still suffering somewhat from his earlier airplane crash, and Capt. Adamson sustained serious injuries during the ditching. The other crewmen in the B-17 were hurt to varying degrees. The crewmen's food supply ran out after three days. Then, on the eighth day, a seagull landed on Rickenbacker's head. He warily and cautiously captured it, and then the survivors meticulously divided it into equal parts and used part of it for fishing bait. They lived on sporadic rain water that fell and similar food "miracles".Rickenbacker assumed leadership, encouraging and browbeating the others to keep their spirits up. One crewman, Alexander Kaczmarczyk of the USAAF, died and was buried at sea. The U.S. Army Air Forces and the U.S. Navy 's patrol planes planned to abandon the search for the lost B-17 crewmen after just over two weeks, but Rickenbacker's wife persuaded them to extend it another week. The services agreed to do so. Once again, the newspapers and radio broadcasts reported that Rickenbacker was dead.A U.S. Navy patro l OS2U-3 Kingfisher float-plane piloted by Lieutenant William F. Eadie, USN spotted and rescued the survivors on November 13, off the coast of Nukufetau in Tuvalu . All were suffering from exposure , sunburn , dehydration , and near- starvation . Eadie was awarded the Navy's Air Medal . Rickenbacker completed his assignment and delivered his message to General MacArthur, which has never been made public. Rickenbacker had thought that he had been lost for 21 days, and wrote a book about this experience titled Seven Came Through , published by Doubleday, Doran . It was not until later that he recalculated the number of days, and he corrected himself in his autobiography in 1967.The story was also recounted in Lt. James Whittaker's boo k We Thought We Heard The Angels Sing , published in 1943. It has additional information that you would not normally see associated with his signature. Usually his signature is accompanied by the year he signed the item as in his book for an example, and not with additional information. It appears to be significant because of the double postmarks which date the departure and return trip.... read more

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