This newspaper clipping preserves a first-person account of a US Navy patrol bomber crew's fight for survival after their aircraft ditched in the frigid Sea of Japan during the Korean War. Flight engineer Joseph Oliver Smith of Fresno, California, described the December 26th mission in a letter to his wife: an engine failure during a routine patrol led to a violent water landing that killed ten of fourteen crewmen. Smith and three others survived roughly forty minutes in 32-degree water before rescue. Preserved within a personal Korean War archive, the clipping documents the human cost borne by naval aviators flying long-range patrol missions off the Korean coast. Project: 218158