Seven Were Saved

Several months after V-J day, a unit of the Army Air Force Air Sea Rescue flies over the South China Sea and rescues a raft of people. During the flight, pilot Captain Jim Willis tells his co-pilot, Lieutenant Pete Sturdevant, that he is impatient to return to base because his girl friend, nurse Susan Briscoe, is flying in for a brief visit. Jim then recalls that he met Susan a year earlier, when he was on leave after completing his fiftieth air mission, and was accidentally assigned to share a room with her because of a housing shortage. Jim explains to Pete that after dating frequently on his leave, they fell in love, but he has only seen her twice since then. When they land, Susie tells him that she has only two hours to visit as she has been assigned to accompany an amnesiac veteran to Manila. Later, Susie decides to leave Jim for good when she learns that he has signed up for another year with the ASRC, which will postpone their marriage. Her plane takes off with Captain Allen Danton and Sergeant Blair at the controls, and fellow passengers Rollin and Alice Hartley, American newlyweds who were prisoners of war in Japan, Lieutenant Martin Pinkert, who is escorting Japanese Colonel Yamura to a war crimes trial, and Smith, her amnesiac patient, whom she has not yet met. When Alice faints at the sight of Smith's face, Allen lowers their altitude and Yamura seizes the opportunity to grab Blair's gun and hijack the plane. The navigator is shot, and Allen struggles with Yamura as the out-of-control plane goes into a dive. Allen is unable to regain altitude after Yamura is subdued and the plane crashes into the ocean. The survivors pile into a life raft which Allen starts to pilot by the stars toward some islands six hundred miles away, and he tries to instill the survivors with confidence. When the base learns that Allen's flight never reached Manila, Jim joins the rescue planes, but because they are following the flight path to Manila, they do not sight the raft. Pinkert insists on keeping Yamura alive and shares his rations with him, despite resistance from the Hartleys, who do not value Yamura's life. After two days of unsuccessful rescue flights, Jim falls ill with a bout of malaria and is grounded. On the raft, a distraught Alice finally admits that Smith is her former husband Philip Briscoe, whom she assumed had died after she saw him shot by Japanese guards in the prisoner camp. Rollin is shocked by the revelation, and Smith finally regains his memory. After three days at sea, several of the survivors try to attack Yamura. Pinkert confesses that he is the sole survivor of his troop, and, believing that he is responsible for their deaths, he is now adamant that Yamura, who led the attack against his troop, survives to meet justice. Smith is discovered missing in the morning, and the survivors assume that Rollin killed him until they find a note scrawled on the raft which reveals that he took his own life. That night, the raft springs a leak, and Blair is attacked by a shark when he goes overboard to cover the hole with his hand. Pinkert saves his life, although he is severely wounded, and they seal the hole with chewing gum. After five days at sea, Allen succumbs to sun blindness, and requires everyone else's help to guide the raft. As a storm hits the ocean, Jim awakens delirious in the hospital, and convinces Pete to take a plane up for a last search mission. Without permission, Jim, Pete and their crew take a plane up and fly an alternate route, finally sighting the raft just as they are about to give up. Although they drop a motorized boat by parachute, the survivors are too weak to row toward it, and Jim parachutes into the ocean to rescue them, while his buddies return to base to get a seaplane. Several weeks after their rescue, the survivors are recovering nicely, and Jim watches as Susie kisses Allen before he leaves for another mission. Jim assumes the worst, but then learns that Susie was merely bidding Allen farewell, and is is staying behind to be with him.