antilia — 1 year ago(September 01, 2024 03:13 PM)

He was also involved in 2 other plane crashes, one as a passenger and one as a pilot, where he helped save the lives of people in the wreckage, and felt those helped redeem himself for the first crash.
https://www.slashfilm.com/1644000/gene-roddenberry-star-trek-survived-plane-crashes/
Gene Roddenberry was called upon to fight for his country after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. By September 1942, he was serving as a pilot fighting in the Pacific Theater of World War II. At only 21 years old, Roddenberry was dealing with terrifying tropical weather, incoming enemy fire, and mechanical failures all while trying to keep his plane aloft, which sounds pretty hellish. Unfortunately, he ended up experiencing two crashes in the military — one as a pilot and one as a passenger. The more significant and well-documented crash happened on August 2, 1943, when Roddenberry, piloting the "Yankee Doodle," had difficulty getting enough lift on the runway on a disputed South Pacific island and crashed into the trees, killing two of his fellow airmen. Investigations into the crash cleared Roddenberry of fault, but he reportedly took it hard and blamed himself for their deaths.
Roddenberry recounted a second crash later in life, though he was a passenger and there were no fatalities. He told biographer Alexander David that he pulled several men out of the burning wreckage during a small military operation that ended with the plane going down. He once said to a friend that maybe pulling those men to safety helped make up for the "Yankee Doodle," which clearly still bothered him. He was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 1945 as a captain and was awarded both an Air Medal and a Distinguished Flying Cross – although his most heroic moment was yet to come.
In an amazing but true story perhaps best documented by the comic The Oatmeal, Roddenberry was responsible for saving more lives when he was co-piloting a Pan Am passenger flight across the desert and there was a major mechanical failure. As the plane burned and plummeted from the sky, he reassured passengers and helped them into crash positions, then he proceeded to pull people from the wreckage despite his own broken ribs.
Investigations were made into what caused the tragic crash, but eventually it was revealed as being something maintenance should have caught and Roddenberry as a co-pilot had no control. It was a refrain Roddenberry grew tired of hearing, with yet another mechanical issue causing another near-crash for the young co-pilot that the airline couldn't quite pinpoint. Worried about making his wife a widow and his new infant daughter fatherless, he resigned from Pan Am in May of 1948.