then you had the third one, was -- we're not sure which picture you have coming up here, joe saloff from new york. and joe was one of those cocky aviators, you know, you watch tom cruise in the the "top gun" kind of thing, how they act was pretty much how he was, always had a cigar, it seemed. of course that picture i have a cigar. but he was known for that. at a party in the united states just before they were going to go over to the pacific joe saloff, he was the wing man for the squadron commander richard kromelin. he told kromelin's wife i will bring him back safely. their planes knocked slightly into each other and kromelin went spinning to his death. the fourth one, howdy harrison was a veteran aviator, had already seen some action in the pacific and he was a father of a couple children. one, howdy in that picture is in the middle, being held up in celebratory fashion by husband buddies. he was the subject of a fascinating rescue at sea while they were off the coast of japan. he had to land his plane in the sea of japan and they had a dumbo, the nickname of the aircraft, flew acros

joe saloff, one of the men who survived said he saw joe saloff's plane going down over tokyo bay, but saloff parachuted out. he saw that but that's all he knew. then that same pilot saw another hellcat explode in the air. but that guy got out by parachuting, as well. the other two of the hellcats to be downed that day were smashed into farmland or terrain, right around the yokohama nasse machi area there. so, that left two guys who got back to the carrier yorktown. four who didn't, four who were shot down. the air group was crestfallen. one of the guys said, you know, this is supposed to be our happiest day. the war is over. but it wasn't. it was our saddest day. because not only do we lose four good friends, but we lost them in the final moments. technically, you could say that these four were shot down after the war ended, if you want to, because they had been alerted that the japanese had agreed to a cessation of hostilities, but they hadn't yet officially signed the surrender document. obviously, that was in september. so they were crestfallen. one of the survivors, marvin odom, w