In his article "There's Always a Way" for American magazine in January 1945, CMoH recipient Jay Zeamer Jr. had this to say about bailing out versus crashing in general, with a comment at the end about ditching:
"My crew and I would rather ride a plane down for a crash landing than bail out, unless the situation were [sic] absolutely hopeless. In every instance I knew about in the Southwest Pacific when a crew stuck together and rode their plane down, they made out better than when crews bailed.
"In one case, two Martin B-26s were lost together above a jungle in heavy weather.* The crew of one bailed. The crew of the other, piloted by Bob Hatch, my old first pilot, chose to take their plane down. They made a belly landing in a clearing at 100 miles an hour. No one was hurt. They stuck together in the jungle and found their way back to Port Moresby within a month. The crew that bailed all got separated in the process and came straggling in, gaunt and emaciated, for the next six months.
"Crash landings at sea are a mean operation, but if the crew is trained in 'ditching' a plane, they can usually all get out alive. The trick is for each man to brace himself in a good position for the crash and then know exactly what he must do the instant the plane stops in the water."
The incident Zeamer is referring to occurred on August 7, 1942, on a mission by the 19th BS/22nd BG out of Woodstock, Aust. When they ran into a thick overcast over New Guinea on their way to Port Moresby, the lead plane, piloted by Zeamer's good friend Walt Krell, and others flew underneath it and made their way safely to PM. Against Krell's advice, Hatch and Seffern flew over it, became lost, and eventually had to crash-land from lack of fuel.
(In a tragic twist of fate, both Hatch and Seffern were killed the following January when, as pilot and copilot, their B-26, with a double crew on board en route back to Australia for a rest, crashed on take-off from 14-Mile Strip. Apparently one of them accidentally retracted the flaps instead of the landing gear and the plane settled before Hatch could make it to 12-Mile, and nosedived into the trees.)