It's the afternoon of May 27, 1943, in the skies above the Pacific Ocean, several hundred miles south of Hawaii.

Louis Zamperini stands on the flight deck of an American B-24 bomber.

Louis is a 26-year-old lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Forces, and while the pilot and co-pilot fly to plane,

Louis carefully scans the waves ahead with a pair of binoculars.

Yesterday, an aircraft from Louis' squadron set out from their air base in Hawaii bound for Canton in China, but it never

arrived. So today, Louis' bombers is one of the two that's been sent out on a search and rescue

mission, scouring the ocean for any sign of the missing plane or its crew. Louis lowers his

binoculars as a metallic rattle shudders through the plane. Looking out the window, Louis sees that one of the bomber's four engines is shaking violently on its mounting.

Then the propeller blades stop turning.

Louis grips the metal walls of the flight deck to steady himself while the co-pilot urgently stabs and switches on the console.

But then a second engine stops working.

Pilot and co-pilot struggled to control the plane, but they can't stop it tipping to the left. The bomber begins spiraling into a dive.

The pilot's face turns pale, and he shouts at Louis to get to his crash station. They're going down.

Louis fights the G-forces of the tumbling plane,

clamors out of the cockpit and into the waist of the bombers. Five other crewmen are already

in their seats as Louis takes his designated spot. Out of the window beside him, the sky spins around

faster and faster. He can't see the ocean, but he knows it can't be far below.

But then a strange sense of calm comes over him. Louis knows that this is his moment to die.

When the B-24 bomber hits the ocean's surface, eight of the men on board are killed instantly.

Louis Zamperini is not one of them, though.

Somehow he and two others survive, but the plane crash is just a beginning.

Louis and the others may be injured and stranded in the Pacific,

...