"George Z. Bush" wrote:


"Gord Beaman" wrote i

It was one of my squadron's aircraft and crews so luckily I
wasn't aboard.

Interesting story. If it happened anywhere between 1960-63, that would have
been my outfit (57th ARSq) that got the mayday and gone out to pick them up and
escort them in to Lajes.

No, actually it was in the early seventies, likely 71 or 72.

We had a pretty big SAR area of responsibility,
roughly 1,000 miles in all directions, so we often found ourselves up near
Iceland looking for guys heading our way who were in trouble.


We knew of your reputation and I can say that it eased our minds
a lot too. You need all the friends that you can get out there.


We had one instance where a guy ferrying a single engine plane (I don't remember
what make it was) to the Middle East for its new owner, a sheik of some sort,
developed engine problems and sent out a mayday. We made radio contact with him
and simultaneously scrambled an HC54, although it was quite late in the day. He
reported that he had passed over a freighter about 30 minutes previously and
said that he didn't think he'd be able to stay aloft until our plane got there,
so we advised him to make a 180 and see if he could locate that vessel while it
was still light and then ditch alongside it, which is exactly what he did.


This sounds very familiar...I'm sure that I read about that
incident somewhere.


The freighter picked him up and deposited him in Galveston Texas a couple of
weeks later instead of the middle East. After we determined that the pilot had
been rescued, we recalled our aircraft. We sent out another flight at daybreak
the following day and, amazingly, we found his abandoned aircraft still afloat
in the Atlantic.

George Z.


That's pretty amazing indeed, a huge bulk oil tanker looks
unbelievably tiny in that absolutely huge expanse of ocean when
seen from altitude. Then as you circle around it while punching
down down down to 'rig it' (photograph and get it's data to
report ashore) it keeps getting bigger and bigger till it's a
huge steel monster spouting smoke from what seems like about a
dozen big stacks, with men scurrying to and fro on the decks
doing god knows what.

You fly along the length of it about 50 feet off the water
snapping photos as you go and with other crewmembers scribbling
it's description rapidly. They all get their heads together and
decide if they have enough info and you either 'rerig' or pork on
climb power and get your butt up to your cruise altitude (usually
around 8,000 feet - an optimum radar altitude).

It's mind-bending to watch all this size and complexity dwindle
as you circle and climb, it keeps shrinking slowly and being
replaced with white-caps till you actually lose sight of it in
all that huge expanse of white cap strewn miles of ocean from
horizon to horizon. Makes one realize how insignificiently tiny
man is.
--

-Gord.