Indestructible

In December 1941, Paul Irvin Gunn, the middle-aged operations manager of Manila-based Philippine Air Lines, woke up to find his world turned upside down.  The radio brought news that the Japanese just bombed Pearl Harbor, and he knew it would only be a matter of time before the Philippines was attacked. His beloved wife, Polly, and their four children lived right beside one of the main U.S.A.A.F. airbases in the Philippines.

War was coming to his family’s adopted home, and they were right in its path.

Before he could fly them to safety, General MacArthur drafted him into his air force. Suddenly in uniform, wearing captain’s bars, Paul Gunn became the general’s go-to pilot for the most important missions around the Philippines.

On Christmas Eve, Paul Gunn received an order that would change his family’s lives forever. He faced a choice: execute a dangerous yet vital mission, or defy the order and fly his family to safety.

He tried to do both. While in the air on his secret mission, his family fell into Japanese hands.

This is the story of how one man went to extraordinary lengths to save his family from the clutches of the Japanese Army, and how his desperate rescue attempts led to a revolution in air warfare that changed the course of the Pacific War.

Based on years of research, hundreds of hours of interviews, tens of thousands of pages of original documents, letters, diaries, blueprints and reports, Indestructible takes you from deadly air battles of the South Pacific to the Lord of the Flies world of the infamous Santo Tomas Internment camp through the eyes of the Gunn family as their love, resolve and devotion to each other sustained them through their incredible ordeal.