35 Miles from Shore (22 page)

As soon as Silvia had a good fix on the site of the ditching, he passed on the information to Saunders, adding that the Pan Am captain had indicated that the seas were extremely rough. Saunders then passed on this information to the St. Thomas Tower controller.

The Antilles Airboat departed St. Croix shortly after this last radio call. The pilot elected to fly below the overcast. He tuned in the St. Croix VOR and flew the 080-degree radial outbound toward the site of the ditching. Silvia provided radar separation between the Airboat and the Pan Am 727, which was still circling the scene.

T
HE
S
EARCH AND
R
ESCUE
(SAR)
ALARM SOUNDED
at the Coast Guard Air Detachment unit at the Isla Grande airport at 3:55
P.M.,
along with the announcement: “Man the ready helo, DC-9 ditching.” The alarm made a loud ahhooga, ahhooga sound and could be heard by anyone within several hundred yards of the hangar. Bill Shields, Carmond Fitzgerald, and the ready crewman dropped what they were doing and immediately headed for the ramp. They were already wearing their orange NOMEX flight suits.

The crews were trained to be in the air within five minutes of hearing the alarm. Shields wasted little time getting airborne, launching with only a minimal briefing about the ditching. He knew there would be plenty of time to get briefed en route. They had 1,200 pounds of fuel, enough for about three hours of flying. With a top speed of just over 100 knots, they were an hour and a half away from the accident scene.

The next Coast Guard crew to be notified of the ditching was an HU-16 crew that had departed Isla Grande earlier in the day. They
were some seventy-five miles north of San Juan on an intercept mission to escort a C-130 to Ramey Air Force Base. The crew of the C-130 had shut down one of its four engines and had requested a Coast Guard intercept to monitor their flight to Ramey in case the aircraft developed another problem and the crew was forced to ditch. After a brief conversation with the C-130 pilot, the HU-16 turned and headed for St. Croix. Lt. Tom Blank was at the controls.

Coordination of the search and rescue operation was the job of the Rescue Coordination Center (RCC) in San Juan. After notifying the Air Detachment unit at Isla Grande, the duty officer at the RCC then tried to locate additional helicopters and ships that could aid in the rescue. One of the primary tools for locating ships is the Automated Merchant Vessel Reporting system (AMVER). AMVER is a tracking system set up to track ship movements worldwide. Merchant ships voluntarily report their position and expected tracks, which are then added to the AMVER database.
¹

Once the coordinates of a vessel in distress are known, the Coast Guard can check the database to see if there are any ships nearby that can be redirected to aid in a rescue. A quick check of the AMVER system didn't show any ships in the immediate vicinity of the ditching. It did, however, show a Navy LPH-7 anchored off the Coast of Vieques Island.
²
A call was placed to the
USS Guadalcanal
to request its assistance.

When the call came in to the
Guadalcanal
, four CH-46 helicopters were in the pattern, shooting touch and goes. They had spent the day shuttling crews from Camp Garcia back to the ship. Once that task had been completed, the crews decided to get in a few extra landings before calling it a day. Art Nash and Bill Murphy were the two pilots on John Barber's helo. Both were captains. There was a shortage of
co-pilots, so Bill Murphy had volunteered to fill in as Art's co-pilot. All four helicopters were notified by the ship's control tower that a commercial jet had just ditched. The four helicopters landed on the
Guadalcanal
and were hot fueled, meaning they were fueled while the engines were still running and the blades were still turning. Art and Bill received a briefing about the ditching while still seated. As the helicopters were being refueled, additional crewmen hopped aboard, hoping to lend a hand. Randy Logan, a Huey pilot, and Vince Perron, another CH-46 crew chief, hopped on Barber's helicopter. At 4:15
P.M.,
the four helicopters departed off the
Guadalcanal
. They flew in a right echelon formation, with each helicopter staggered to the right and behind the helicopter immediately in front. The helicopters always flew in pairs. Twenty minutes later, at 4:35
P.M.,
two additional helicopters were launched off the
Guadalcanal
. The
Guadalcanal
then raised anchor and left Vieques to aid in the rescue.

On the island of St. Thomas the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter
Point Whitehorn
was notified of the ditching. The boat was docked at the CG Pier near King's Wharf, St. Thomas Harbor, Charlotte Amalie. The crew of the eighty-two-foot patrol boat had spent the early part of the day repairing a navigation buoy and later did some routine training. They had arrived back at the dock at noon. It was just before 4.00
P.M.
when Commander Billy Cobb got word that a commercial jet had ditched off the coast of St. Croix. Most of the crew was just returning from liberty. The boat was still hooked up to water, power, and telephone service via shore tie. It took nearly thirty minutes to ready the boat. At 4:30
P.M.,
the
Point Whitehorn
was finally underway for position 17:53 N, 64:14 W.

In a straight line, they were about sixty miles away from the site of the ditching. But they first had to negotiate their way out of St.
Thomas harbor, which was always crowded with an assortment of yachts, sailboats, and cruise ships. The
Point Whitehorn
had a top speed of 23 knots. Rough seas, however, would prevent them from attaining anywhere close to that speed. With the sun setting in less than three hours, Billy Cobb knew it would be dark before they would reach the survivors.
³

Lt. (j.g.) Donald G. Hartman got the call about the ditching just after 4:00
P.M.
He had been hanging out in his room with his girlfriend at the Bachelor's Officer Quarters (BOQ) at the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station. He was on call to fly the H-34, a small helicopter powered by a single-rotary piston engine. When he heard that the plane that had ditched was a commercial jet, he knew the H-34 wasn't the right helicopter for the mission. He was going to need the SH-3A Sea King, a much larger helicopter known for its lifting capacity. The SH-3A, powered by twin-turbine engines, was new to the VC-8 squadron, having been acquired at the beginning of the year as a replacement for the H-34s. There weren't that many pilots and crewmen qualified to fly the new helicopter, including Hartman. He called the Operations Officer, Lt. Commander James Rylee, to report the ditching and to discuss with him the possibility of using the SH-3A.

Jim Rylee hadn't planned on doing any flying this day. He wasn't feeling all that well, thanks to a nagging cold. But he agreed with Hartman that they should use the SH-3A. He told Hartman to call the hangar and have them ready the helicopter. He also told him to make sure they had two qualified crewmen in back to work the hoist. Jim told his wife about the ditching as he was running out the door. He was in a hurry and had to swerve around traffic as he pulled out onto the main road leading to the airport. His erratic driving caught the attention of an MP, who hadn't failed to notice the tiny Renault
Dauphine speeding in the speed restricted housing area. Jim thought about pulling over but decided he didn't have time. At one point, he looked in his rearview mirror and noticed that the MP, who was driving a jeep, had drawn his gun. There was a brief second or two when Jim thought he might not make it to the airport. Fortunately, the MP decided that the tiny car wasn't much of a threat.

Pulling up to the hangar, Jim was met by the duty officer who informed him that the helicopter was ready and that the rest of the crew was waiting for him inside. Jim left the duty officer to explain things to the MP as he ran into the hangar to put on his flight suit.

Rylee met with the other three crewmen in the maintenance office. Donald Hartman, the on duty pilot, was going to be Jim's co-pilot. Bill Brazzell and Calvin V. Lindley were going to work the rescue from the back of the helicopter. Brazzell was a supervisor of maintenance and quality assurance. Lindley, who went by C.V., was the senior crewman in the squadron and the most experienced hoist operator on the SH-3A. Both men had been at separate barbeques when they first got word of the accident.

There were few details about the ditching other than it was a DC-9. Rylee figured that a DC-9 might hold up to 100 passengers. He had no idea how many people he could carry in the SH-3A. The normal passenger configuration was for fifteen passengers. Fortunately, the helicopter they were planning to use had no passenger seats. It was empty in back except for the two crew seats and a small canvas troop seat. The fact that there were no seats in back was an advantage. They could squeeze in more people. They departed Roosevelt Roads at 4:40
P.M.

Bill Bohlke learned of the ditching from an excited airport employee who had burst into his office with the news. Bill ran up to the tower to get more information from the tower operator, Don Bishop. Don
confirmed that an aircraft had just ditched and mistakenly said that it was a CaribAir DC-9. CaribAir, short for Caribbean Atlantic Airlines, was the only airline in the area that operated the DC-9 on a regular basis. Bill raced back downstairs to the flight school and started to formulate a plan for dropping life rafts to the survivors. The best aircraft for the task was the Skyvan, a boxy aircraft with a clamshell-type cargo door that could be opened in flight. Unfortunately, the Skyvan was loaded with four thousand pounds of dirty laundry. Bill's father had a contract with the Cadillac Uniform Company to fly twice a week to San Juan. They would fly the dirty uniforms to San Juan and then pick up clean uniforms to return to St. Croix. The next run to San Juan was scheduled for Monday morning. Bill ran to the hangar and told George Stoute about the ditching and his plan to drop life rafts. George headed for a storage room to grab an old war surplus twenty-man life raft. The Skyvan already carried a small four-man life raft. George Johnson and Andy Titus, the two pilots who had been grounded by the weather, eagerly offered their assistance. Another pilot, Paul Wikander, who had stopped by the airport to ready an aircraft for an early morning flight the next day, also agreed to go along. Bill called to have the aircraft fueled, then he and the others grabbed a few cargo carts and started throwing dirty laundry into the carts.

As soon as the laundry from the Skyvan was unloaded, the overflowing cargo carts were pushed aside and Bill fired up the Skyvan's two engines. He called the tower from the aircraft to get an update. By this time Don Bishop, the controller who had confirmed the ditching, had been relieved and a new controller, Jimmy Gingrich, was on duty. Bill was told the general location of the ditching and was also told that it was an ALM and not a CaribAir DC-9. There were no seats in the back of the Skyvan. George Stoute, Paul Wikander and Andy Titus sat on the floor; George Johnson sat in the right seat.