Forsaken Mission
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Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast will feature three military horror stories. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.

The first story you'll hear is called Ramry Island, and what happened on that island would go down as one of the most terrifying world records ever recorded. The second story you'll hear is called Set Zed, and it's about quite possibly the worst way to die. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Lighter Than Air, and it's about two pilots who go on a routine patrol in their blimp, but what happened next is a baffling mystery to this day.

But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please push the Amazon Music Follow button into the devil's kettle in Minnesota. Okay, let's get into our first story called Ramry Island. The show is brought to you by Progressive.

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In early 1945, during World War II, the British decided they wanted to take back Ramree Island from the Japanese.

Ramree Island is a fairly large, totally flat island off the coast of Burma that was a great staging location to fly air campaigns onto the mainland. So it was a great air base. And the British had actually owned this island, but the Japanese had taken it back from them in 1942. And so here they are in 1945 looking to take it back. So on January 21st, 1945, British and Indian infantry stormed the beaches of Ramree to try to take it back.

As soon as they land, they have all this naval artillery support just bombing the crap out of this airbase. It was just a matter of time before they overwhelmed the remaining Japanese. But the Japanese do not want to surrender, and instead they give up the airbase that they were on, so the British take that back, and the remaining 1,000 Japanese soldiers started retreating to the opposite end of the island, to where there was a much larger battalion of Japanese soldiers that they could meet up with.

But the only issue with this particular retreat was they would have to go through 10 miles of mangrove swamp where there's poisonous spiders and insects and deep mud making it almost impossible to move. But they're determined and they head off into the swamp. But what the Japanese were not ready for is what Ramri Island is famous for. A creature that makes poisonous snakes and spiders and insects look like child's play.

and they were walking directly into its den. The British troops decided we're not going to go chasing them into the swamp. And instead what they did is they set up boats blocking positions outside of the swamp. If any of the Japanese tried to escape, they would be there waiting. And so the only way the Japanese could get out of there would be to go to the absolute other end, 10 miles away where their Japanese counterparts were.

So that night is the British are just kind of hanging out in their boats staring at the swamp. They start hearing screams coming from inside of the swamp and it's Japanese soldiers. Then you hear gunfire and then silence and then it would start all over again all over this huge swamp was just screams gunfire silence screams gunfire silence and the British are watching this like do we have troops in there? What's going on in there?

What was going on in there is defined by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest massacre of humans caused by animals. And not just any animal, saltwater crocodiles.

These massive man-eating crocodiles can weigh up to 1,000 kilograms or 2,200 pounds. They can grow to be 7 meters in length or about 23 feet in length. And National Geographic has labeled these crocodiles as the most likely to eat a human of all animals.

And Ramree Island has the largest population of saltwater crocodiles in the world. And they all lived inside of the swamp that the Japanese had gone into. A lot of them were bleeding from the battle they were in. And so they were literally alerting hundreds of saltwater crocodiles to their location.

Saltwater crocodiles are notorious night hunters. So what probably happened is the Japanese got inside of this mangrove, the crocodiles were immediately aware of their presence, but they waited until nighttime before they started having a feeding frenzy.

And over the course of the night, a number of Japanese soldiers had jumped out the sides of the swamp, exposing themselves to the British. And so about 20 of them were captured. And they said that they were completely surrounded by these crocodiles, that everywhere you looked, there were growling, huge crocodiles eating one person. And as soon as they were done, they would just charge after you and eat you. And at the end of their retreat, when the Japanese did get to the other side of the swamp, only 500 of the 1,000 made it out the other side.

And so to this day, people stay far away from Ramree Island because there are so many of these man-eating saltwater crocodiles that have no issue ripping you to shreds. Our next story is called Set Zed. On December 6, 1941, 20-year-old U.S. Navy sailor Clifford Olds met up with a couple of his shipmates at the Monkey Bar for a night out in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

The next morning, just before 8:00 a.m., Cliff was back on board his ship, the USS West Virginia. He was starting his workday when the Japanese launched the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Cliff's ship was a prime target and was quickly hit with two bombs, seven torpedoes, hundreds of people are dying on board, and very quickly, his ship is starting to sink.

On board a Navy ship, there's all these different conditions the ship is set to depending on what you're doing, whether you're at war or you're just docked in peacetime. And all of these different conditions have very specific instructions. And one of those conditions is condition Z, better known as setting Z. If the captain of a ship calls this out over the loudspeakers, every single hatch inside of that ship is shut and locked.

If your ship is sinking and you say "Set Zed" you are sealing all of those compartments so no more water can flow into them and you can maintain a little bit of buoyancy so you don't sink quite as fast. But if you set Zed as your ship is sinking, especially if you're getting attacked and there's all these holes in your ship, there's a good chance when you seal those hatches you're going to be sealing people inside of these rooms and they will not be able to get out again.

So when that call comes out over the loudspeakers, set Z, everybody knows to get the heck out of their compartments so that they do not get trapped inside of one of those rooms.

On Cliff's ship, Set Zed was called over the loudspeakers, and Cliff, along with Ron Endicott, who was 18, and Buddy Koston, who was 21, were at the bottom of the ship in the freshwater pump room, and when someone came by and shut and sealed their room, they did not see them in there. And so probably the three of them ran to the door and were banging on it and trying to get someone's attention, but in the chaos of the moment, that person on the other side of the door that could have opened it up again was now gone.

Even though the Set-Z procedure did prevent water from going into certain cabins on the West Virginia, it still would sink to the bottom of the ocean along with 17 other ships. The next day, there was a whole bunch of Marines that were on the dock right next to where the wreckage of the West Virginia was underneath the water. And as they're standing in the dock, they start hearing a banging sound.

And at first they think it's probably just a salvage team or it's some strap clanging against the side of one of these ships. But they started to notice the tapping sounds started to sound like intentional rhythms that a human might make. And it dawned on them that someone is trying to get our attention underwater. There are people trapped in the West Virginia.

But when the Marines ran to their superiors and told them there are people trapped inside of the ship, we have to get them out, they broke the horrible news that there's nothing they could do for them. If they went down and began trying to cut a hole in the side of the ship so they could swim out, as soon as there's even a tiny little hole on the side of that ship, there's so much pressure that it would rush inside and fill that space almost immediately, and they wouldn't be able to cut a hole big enough, fast enough, and so cutting into the ship is going to kill them.

Also, just lighting that torch presents a unique problem because there's so many chemicals in the water. From all of the attacks that happened the day before, we run the risk of lighting a fire or lighting off an explosion that could take even more life. And because they were still months away from being able to raise the ship out of the water, which would save them, the decision was made that we're going to have to let them die.

And so for the next 16 days, Marines and sailors were put on guard duty right next to the wreckage of the USS West Virginia. And they would listen to the tapping as they desperately tried to tell people, "Come down here, save us. We're alive. We're not going anywhere. Please help us." And the Marines and sailors were so distressed about this. It was so horrible to listen to. They would cry and cover their ears because they wanted to save them. They're so close, but they're so far away.

Finally, on Christmas Eve, the banging stopped. Six months later, they were finally able to raise the West Virginia out of the water. And as crews were going through all the different compartments and removing bodies, they got to the freshwater pump room where Cliff, Ron, and Buddy had been. They open it up and they find three bodies, and they realize right away the torture these poor guys had gone through. Inside this airtight section was this locker full of food rations.

They're also in the freshwater pump room. And so they just opened up the tank and they had all the fresh water they needed. But what they didn't have enough of was air. And so for 16 days, sitting in the dark at the bottom of the ocean, knowing they're not going to get out of here, they slowly suffocated. And we know they were alive for those 16 days because they had a calendar where they were marking off each of the days they were down there in Red Pen.

This story was so distressing, the Navy decided not to share the information about what happened to those three to their families. It wasn't until years later the truth came out. But even today, on memorials and monuments commemorating what happened at Pearl Harbor, they are listed, Cliff, Buddy, and Ron are listed as killed in action on December 7th.

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The next and final story of today's episode is called Lighter Than Air.

On the morning of August 16, 1942, a woman named Ida Ruby was riding her horse on a dirt path right near a beach just south of San Francisco, California.

Now, during the week, Ida was a telephone operator, but it was a Sunday, so she had time off. And the way she liked to spend her time off was by riding her horse along the coastline and, you know, looking out at the beautiful water and taking in the nature and all these unbelievable cliffs that went down to the water. I mean, this was a beautiful area. And every time Ida would go out and do this little ride around, she would bring binoculars with her. And so anytime she saw something of interest, she would stop and, you know, use her binoculars to see what it was, like animals or things out over the water.

And on this particular Sunday, Ida turned a corner and as soon as she did, something caught her attention off to her right, out over the water. And so she stopped her horse and she turned and she looked out and the sea was very calm and she could see way out just past the horizon was what looked like this black thing kind of hovering over the water. And instead of raising her binoculars right away, she just kind of squinted and looked off in the direction and she quickly realized what it was. It was a blimp.

Now, today, when we hear the word blimp, we very likely think of the Goodyear blimp that kind of sits over sporting events, you know, with the big Goodyear logo stamped on the side of it. It's basically a big balloon with a gondola that sits underneath it for the person who's driving it and passengers. And that's actually exactly what Ida was seeing, a big oversized balloon with a gondola underneath it. But this was not a Goodyear blimp. It was a military blimp.

Because this was 1942, right in the middle of World War II. And nine months earlier, the United States had joined World War II after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. And ever since then, Japanese submarines had been lurking off the coast of California, kind of all across the West Coast, out in the Pacific Ocean. And occasionally, they would send torpedoes out and bomb the U.S. mainland.

And so the United States responded to this by launching this fleet of blimps that basically were able to get really low to the water, that could move really slowly, and they would basically fly all along the Pacific coastline looking for Japanese submarines. They could literally go down and from their gondola, they could look down and actually see submarines and mark them for bombing runs or, you know, scare them off.

And so Ida, like anybody else who was living on the west coast of the United States at the time, was aware that there were blimps out over the ocean, but it was still a fairly uncommon sight. And so because of that, Ida was sort of intrigued, and so she raised her binoculars, and she focused on this blimp, and she would see something that was so strange that even 80 years later, nobody can fully explain it.

But to really understand why what she saw was so weird, we need to back up about five hours on the same day to about 6 a.m. at a military base just north of where Ida was seeing this blimp. And so at 6 a.m. at this military base, that particular blimp that Ida would later see was at this military base on the ground, and some Navy pilots and mechanics were preparing the blimp for a routine mission out over the San Francisco Bay to look for Japanese submarines.

The intended path this blimp was going to take on this day was it would leave the base and the pilot would take it over the famous Golden Gate Bridge, and then it would travel 28 miles to the west to the Farallon Islands. And then from there, the pilot would go 20 miles to the north to a peninsula called Point Reyes, and then from there, the pilot would head south along the coastline all the way back to base. This whole mission profile was scheduled to take about four hours.

The pilots for this mission were going to be a 27-year-old Navy Lieutenant named Ernest Cody and a 34-year-old officer named Charles Adams. And both of them were very experienced blimp pilots. They had done missions like this many times before. This was going to be a very routine mission for them. And then also, in addition to those two pilots, there would be a Navy mechanic who would join the two pilots in case there was any malfunctions with the blimp during the mission.

And so everything was going to plan with this blimp that morning. You know, there was nothing unusual about this mission. But right as the two pilots and the mechanic were literally getting inside of the gondola to begin this mission, Lieutenant Cody looked down at the control panel inside the blimp and he noticed the blimp was way heavier than it should have been.

Now, you have to understand that the level of rigor that went into preparing these blimps for flight was really intense. I mean, they were weighing every little thing that was put inside of this blimp because it was a really important part of flying these blimps, understanding how heavy it was. And so for this to be too heavy just made no sense. And so at first, Cody and Adams began like tapping on the control panel, thinking maybe the panel itself was malfunctioning. And if they hit it hard enough, the little ticker

would go back to a normal weight. But despite, you know, hitting the panel, it still showed it was too heavy. And so they flagged over the mechanic who was going to be joining them on the flight anyways. And the mechanic looked and kind of thought for a second and then realized, you know, that day it had been very foggy. And so it was totally possible that all this extra moisture in the air had stuck to the surface of the balloon. And so collectively that had added quite a bit of weight. I mean, this is a massive balloon, a lot of surface area, a lot of water.

Now, this was not some crisis. At worst, this was an inconvenience. Basically, they had to wait until this moisture kind of burned off once the sun came out, and then they could fly the blimp.

But Cody and Adams, they just didn't feel like waiting. This mission was so routine, so simple. They'd done it so many times. And so Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams decided that the easiest and fastest solution to this problem was simply to tell the mechanic who was going to come with them on this mission to not come with them. Without his weight inside of the gondola, even with this extra moisture in the blimp, it wouldn't matter. The blimp would still be light enough to fly with just the two pilots on board.

The mechanic didn't care, so he hopped off, and then Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams took their seats inside the gondola, and sure enough, when they looked at the control panel, the blimp was ready to go. It was light enough. And so Lieutenant Cody fired up the blimp's engines, and just after 6 a.m. that morning, Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams lifted off the ground and began their routine mission.

About an hour and a half later, at 7:38 AM, Lieutenant Cody radioed back to air control, saying that so far the patrol had been totally routine, everything was going smoothly, they hadn't seen any Japanese submarines or anything out of the ordinary. And also, Lieutenant Cody said they were positioned just east of the Farallon Islands, which meant they were exactly on course and really everything did seem to be going exactly to plan.

But four minutes later, Lieutenant Cody radioed back again to air control, and he said they had just spotted an oil slick down on the water. So basically, picture from their perspective, they saw that gleaning oil sitting on top of the ocean. And so at the time, this often signaled that below the surface of the water, under this oil slick, was a submarine. So this is like a telltale sign that the Japanese could be right here.

So Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams told air control that they were going to descend in the blimp down to the water and fully investigate this oil slick, and then they'd report back. This last transmission happened at 7.50 a.m.

A few minutes later, a fishing boat named the Daisy Gray was gliding slowly through the water just east of the Farallon Islands when all of a sudden the captain, who's looking straight ahead, he turned the boat and he happened to see straight ahead of him this massive blimp, the same blimp Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams were in, descending very quickly through the clouds down towards the water.

And remember, this was a pretty cloudy day, and so really this blimp kind of came out of nowhere, and this fishing boat captain was very aware that any time blimps were out over the water, that was because they were looking for enemy submarines. And this captain realized he was heading right now straight in the direction of wherever this blimp was descending towards. And so the captain looked out ahead,

And he saw that big oil slick on top of the water, maybe 100 yards away from him. And so he put it together that, oh my gosh, this blimp is going to that slick. That means there's an enemy submarine basically right there. And so in a panic, the fishing boat captain called to his crew to pull in the fishing nets and he turned the wheel as fast as he could and he hit the accelerator, doing everything he could to get away from this blimp.

because he knew that typically what happened when a blimp came down and actually found a submarine is they sometimes dropped bombs on the submarine. I mean, this is warfare.

And so the fishing boat captain is getting away as fast as he can. And as soon as he's turned around, he looked back and he saw the blimp was now about 30 feet over the water. And someone inside the gondola was now leaning out over the side and they dropped two things directly into the water, into that oil slick. And then seconds later, these huge plumes of smoke were coming out of the water.

The person had just dropped some flares basically marking where this submarine was. And so now the captain knew, okay, it's a submarine and the next thing is very likely going to be a bomb, like a depth charge is going to be dropped right there.

And so again, the captain's just speeding his way as fast as he can, hoping that if they do drop a bomb, it doesn't affect him and his crew. And so after making it another couple hundred feet away from this blimp, the captain again turned around, expecting to see this blimp still hovering where it was, because again, they had just dropped flares. They're preparing to do something major right there.

But now when the captain turned around, he saw the blimp was no longer hanging out over the water. The blimp was now rocketing back up into the clouds like as fast as it possibly could. And before long, the blimp was gone. It disappeared into the clouds and there had been no bomb dropped. I mean, nothing really happened beyond marking the water. So it was like, what's going on with this blimp?

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And so Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams, they had clearly descended down to the water because that fishing boat saw it happen. But then after they rocketed back up to the clouds for some reason, they never radioed back to air control. And so air control is waiting and waiting. They're not hearing back from Lieutenant Cody or Officer Adams. And finally, they began hailing the two pilots to say, hey, what's going on? You said you were going to investigate. What'd you find? What happened? But they could not get in touch with Lieutenant Cody or Officer Adams.

And so eventually, after enough time had passed and they still had not heard from these pilots, air control sent two seaplanes out to that area east of the Farallon Islands to find the blimp and make sure the blimp was okay.

But when the seaplanes got out there, they couldn't find the blimp anywhere. I mean, they flew all over the place doing wider and wider circuits. There was no sign of the blimp. And when they looked down at the water in the same area where Lieutenant Cody had called out that slick and where that fishing boat had also seen the slick, well, the slick was gone or the seaplanes just couldn't see the oil slick.

But the seaplanes stayed on station in that area near the Farallon Islands for another two hours, just flying all over the place, kind of hoping to eventually see this blimp. And eventually they would. At about 10:30 a.m. that morning, one of the seaplanes spotted the blimp way, way high in the sky, like way higher than any blimp would ever go. It is dangerously high and it was way off course.

But when these two seaplane pilots began flying towards the blimp to get eyes on the pilots inside of this blimp, Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams, well, when they got close enough, the blimp just began rapidly descending like it was trying to avoid being seen by these seaplanes.

And in fact, the blimp descended so quickly that it dropped below the cloud cover and the seaplanes, they couldn't move that quickly. They had to do a big track to turn back around and try to go lower again. But once they got below the clouds to find this blimp, the blimp was gone. It basically had vanished.

And so the seaplane pilots called back to air control and they're like, I don't know what's going on with this blimp, but it's way off course. It was way up in the sky. Now it's somewhere down below, but we can't find it. We got to get in touch with Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams. There's obviously something wrong. But air control would try over and over again to get in touch with these pilots. But neither Cody nor Adams ever responded. They had just gone totally radio silent.

And at the same time, this chaos with this blimp is happening. Ida Ruby, the woman at the beginning of the story, was riding her horse on that dirt path near the beach just south of San Francisco. And she looked out over the water and she saw that blimp. And so Ida Ruby, she stops, she raises her binoculars and she looks at this blimp. And after she focuses her binoculars, she realizes there's obviously something wrong with this blimp.

The actual balloon portion of the blimp, which said "Navy" on it, had collapsed so much in the middle that you couldn't even read the word "Navy". It was all crumpled together because, again, the balloon is like deflated. And also she saw that this blimp appeared to just be kind of listing as if the wind was blowing it and it was not being directed by the pilots inside. And this blimp appeared to be getting blown directly towards Ida.

And so she lowered her binoculars and she looked out with her naked eye. And sure enough, this crumpled up blimp that was still afloat, but clearly was not doing too well, was getting closer and closer and closer to her. And as it was, it was getting lower and lower to the ground. And she's starting to worry it's going to smash into her. But right as this blimp was about to pass basically right over her head, she raised her binoculars one more time and she got a clear look inside of the gondola where Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams would have been.

Now, Ida Ruby has no idea who's supposed to be inside of this blimp and who isn't or even what they're doing, but she definitely recalled exactly what she saw inside of that gondola. And that's the thing that has troubled everybody for so many years, because what she saw was three people inside of that gondola.

And if you recall, that gondola only ever contained two people. It was Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams. But now, Ida Ruby is looking up and clear as day, there are three people in that gondola. Even though at no point was there three people. It didn't leave with three. It didn't come down and take more people on board. It made no sense that there were three people inside of that gondola. Again, Ida Ruby wouldn't have known that. But when that information got passed, this was like, how could that be?

And so after seeing the three men inside of this blimp, Ida lowered her binoculars and watched in horror as this deflated blimp drifted just above her, you know, like practically arm's length above her and careened over the cliffs behind her and smashed into the ground. And then seconds later, Ida began hearing sirens going off in Daly City, which was located right behind her. That was the nearest town.

And so as the blimp came in for a crash landing in Daly City, it scraped across a couple of residential rooftops and hit a couple power lines before kind of coming to a stop in the middle of the street. Now, the blimp didn't like explode or catch on fire or anything. It just kind of crumpled to the ground and nobody got out of it. It just kind of stopped and it was there right in the middle of the street.

And very quickly, first responders rushed to this blimp because there have been so many reports of this deflated blimp looking like it was about to crash. And so they had been tracking it and here it was. And so they ran up to this blimp. But at some point, one of the first responders ran up to the gondola itself where the door was slightly open and they opened it up hoping to find there would be some survivors inside.

But when he looked inside of this relatively small space, there was nobody in there. And there was no sign that anybody had been in there. There was no blood or anything. It was just an empty gondola.

But remember, minutes before, not even, Ida Ruby had clearly seen three people inside of that gondola. So to go from three people to none in the space of like, you know, a couple hundred feet as everybody's watching this thing come into crash land in Daily City, like where could they have gone?

And even weirder was when they looked inside of the gondola, they discovered that basically everything was functioning perfectly fine. It was unclear how it became deflated because again, all the controls inside of this thing were working just fine. And also like the parachutes were still inside of this gondola. Like if you're gonna jump out, you need a parachute, but they were in here. And also the life raft, it was still inside of the gondola. It was like there was nothing wrong with the blimp. And so this whole situation made no sense.

The Navy would launch an exhaustive investigation into what happened with this blimp. And the only explanation the Navy came up with was, well, it looks like Officer Adams and Lieutenant Cody just fell out of the blimp at the exact same time and they disappeared into the ocean.

However, both pilots were wearing life preservers and would not have taken those off. That was like absolutely 101 for being a pilot of one of these blimps. And so they would have had these life preservers on and even if they had fallen out and perished, they would have floated to the surface or if they landed on land, they would have likely been found. I mean, the entire route they had been on was heavily scrutinized and searched, but the bodies were never found.

And then also the Navy could not explain how Ida Ruby clearly saw three people absolutely like 100 feet away from her inside of that gondola. Like she had no reason to lie about that. She was just saying, yeah, I looked up, saw three people, saw it crash into Daly City. She didn't know there was supposed to be two people. Like she was just calling what she saw. But the Navy had no explanation.

And so in the years that have followed this empty blimp crash in Daly City, it's been dubbed the "Ghost Blimp Story" and loads of theories circulate about what could have happened here. Some people say that, you know, the reason there was all that extra weight at the beginning of the mission profile at 6am was not because of moisture on the balloon, but because there had to have been maybe a stowaway somewhere in the blimp and then

And then after takeoff, you know, they jump down into the gondola and maybe they were responsible for whatever happened to the pilots and why the blimp crashed. But it doesn't explain what happened to those three people. What happened to the stowaway? What happened to Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams' body? We don't know.

Other theories include that maybe Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams were somehow captured by the Japanese, and some other people say, you know, maybe Cody and Adams were abducted by aliens. But as far-fetched as these theories might seem, the truth is we really have no idea what happened on that ghost blimp. A quick note about our stories: they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts. There's this one, of course, the Mr. Ballin Podcast, and there's Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, Run Full, Redacted, and Late Nights with Nexpo. All you have to do is search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts.

To watch hundreds more stories just like this one, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.

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