On 11th July, 1943, the B-17F piloted by Lt.Ralph De Loach and his nine crew members was one of ten ships that took off for a mission to Rabaul. They'd taken off after midnight and soon encountered terrible weather conditions making navigation difficult, especially with a faulty compass. The number 3 and 4 engines began to malfunction approx. 30 miles from Rabaul, all though they managed to make the target and drop their bombs. Turning away from the target, they struggled to maintain altitude, one of the malfunctioning engines having had to be feathered and one wing low. To make a bad situation worse, they encountered a severe thunderstorm and were by this time also low on fuel. With only two fully operational engines, one faltering, and another feathered, it was impossible to hold a straight course and they became lost within the thunderstorm. They do, however, manage to send out an SOS, and after eventually breaking out of the heavy clouds, De Loach and his co-pilot decide to ditch the stricken B-17, but instead of coming down in a shallow waters of a reef as anticipated, hit the deeper shark-infested waters of Milne Bay, New Guinea. The crew, three of which were seriously injured,were thankfully saved by natives.