The unexpected rescue mission that inspired ABC mini-series Flight into Hell — and other survivalists

It’s the unlikely tale of survival you’d expect to see on the silver screen, not in the history books.

“When I tell you how the Samaritans of the wilds tended and cared for us,” German aviator Hans Bertram would write years later, “you’ll understand that I wish to bear witness to the greatest and noblest virtue of the human soul — charity.”

In 1932, Bertram and fellow pilot Adolf Klausmann set out to circumnavigate the globe in a Junkers seaplane, Atlantis, when they hit a severe storm between Timor and Darwin.

Faced with a critical fuel shortage, and with little knowledge of the unforgiving landscape below them, they put their plane down on the Kimberley coast, some hundreds of kilometres from their intended destination.

Stranded, and…