I was in the US Air Force 55th Air Rescue Squadron stationed on the Island of Bermuda. My job was as a Flight Engineer on a SC-54D Skymaster Search and Rescue aircraft that carried four MA-1 droppable rescue kits. Each kit contained two 20-person inflatable life rafts connected with nylon ropes and other inflatable containers that contained supplies and provisions. The rescue kits would be dropped to encircle survivors in order to get them out of the water and provide them with food and the necessary survival equipment until a Coast Guard ship could pick them up.
Prior to becoming a Flight Engineer on the SC-54D, my job was as a Flight Mechanic on the C-124 Globemaster. I had repair responsibility for an entire mission and the most critical part of my job was to repair the plane in flight. The C-124 had tunnels inside of the wings that allowed a person to crawl to the rear of each engine in order to make any necessary repairs and replace any parts necessary. We carried a large container of spare parts onboard the plane on every mission for that purpose.
Many times, I was able to repair or replace a malfunctioning part while airborne and extend the flight to its destination without the necessity to land for repairs.
The C-124 has 4 engines, and we simply stopped the engine that needed the repairs, flew on 3 engines while repairs were being performed, or parts were being replaced, restarted the engine when completed, and I would retreat into the safety of the main aircraft. At the time, I thought it was a very cool job but years later I came to realize that it was the only aircraft that was capable of being serviced in that manner. It was necessary to have that repair capability because the huge 4,360 cubic inch engines were not very reliable and some of our flights, such as the one from Tokyo Japan to Seattle Washington, were 24 hours long and over water.
At the time of this incident, I did not really relate to all of this happening in the infamous and mysterious Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil’s Triangle, noted for all the weird things that happened with numerous planes and ships disappearing. We had our first experience of that weirdness within a few weeks of arriving on the island when a US Air Force F-4 Phantom II Fighter Jet simply disappeared from Radar for no apparent reason. We searched the surrounding ocean for weeks from the last reported position of the plane and finally found an inflated tire floating with a short length of a landing strut attached. It was later determined to be a part of the aircraft, but no reason was ever determined for what exactly happened to the rest of the plane or the Pilot. We joked … “Welcome to the Bermuda Triangle, the Phantom meets the Grim Reaper….do have a good time!”
We were in the path of numerous storm systems and hurricanes during that season. Our mission, in addition to being responsive to any emergency on land and sea in the surrounding area, included working in concert with the WB-50 Hurricane Hunters to track any and all storm and Hurricane activity. The job of the WB-50 was to penetrate the center of the Hurricane and drop instruments that would allow measurements. The remarkable aspect of a Hurricane is that once the violent winds of the outside are penetrated the inside of the funnel is eerily calm and large enough to fly around inside dropping measurement instruments. Our job was to stay as close to them as possible once they had penetrated the outside wall of violent winds to reach the calm center, keep constant communication, and be available for rescue in case anything went wrong.
The never-spoken about reality of their mission was that if something went wrong with their aircraft and they hit the wall of the Hurricane there would probably be nothing to save.
In staying as close as possible to them on the outside of the Hurricane, we were exposed for extended periods of time to extremely violent winds that routinely caused structural damage to the aircraft. We referred to the outside of the Hurricane as the “no fun zone!” Once the WB-50 had penetrated to the center of the storm, and was flying around in its calm air, they would radio out to us and laughing, ask “How is it going out there?” knowing that we were getting the crap kicked out of us.
Prior to coming to Bermuda, our Air Rescue Squadron had served 10 months at the Thule Air Base, or Thule Air Base. Thule is the United States Air Force‘s northernmost base, located 1,207 km (750 mi) north of the Arctic Circle and 1,524 km (947 mi) from the North Pole on the northwest coast of the island of Greenland. When our unit relocated to Bermuda, just being in warm weather and being around civilian people, (especially women!) made it an absolute paradise.
While on duty we slept in the hangar with the airplane so that when an emergency call came in we could race to the aircraft, start the engines, check out all systems while taxing to the runway, and be able to get airborne in a matter of minutes. Once in flight, we were able to get radio contact with the plane in distress and we found out that their plane was a Canadian S2F Aircraft, with a 5-person crew aboard. They had taken off from the East coast of Canada, headed for South Carolina, had made a navigational error, and were closer to Bermuda when they discovered their error, with no possibility of reaching either of the land locations with their remaining fuel.
The blasting of the Emergency Horn woke up our crew up at about 2:00 AM. The many months of practice and actual emergency responses paid off, things went remarkably smoothly, and very soon, we had gotten airborne and headed off into the black, stormy skies above Bermuda. Once airborne, we established radio contact with the plane that had declared the emergency, determined their status, and approximate location, and plotted a path to rendezvous with them.
After calculating their position and remaining fuel we concluded that it was probably not possible that we would be able to reach them prior to their running out of their remaining fuel. It was certain that they would have to crash land into the ocean prior to our being able to rendezvous with them. The Radio Operator on their plane kept up a steady dialogue with us as the rest of the crew prepared for the crash landing into the ocean. Over the radio we heard first one and then the other of their two engines silence as they ran out of fuel. In the silence, since they were obviously still flying, we heard the Radio Operator say “I don’t know what to do, so I might as well start a countdown …10,9,8,7…” I remember the silence in our headsets seemed to be absolutely deafening when the countdown abruptly ended. We all looked at each other in the silence that remained with the realization that we had probably lost the 5 people on that plane and might not be able to locate them because we calculated that were still about 30 minutes away from their last reported position.
In our rescue plane, an SC-54D, in my position, as a Flight Engineer, I sat between the Pilot and the Co-Pilot in the Cockpit after the loss of contact, we all looked at each other with the knowledge that with the bad weather and high winds and high waves that were developing, that we had probably lost these guys. As we continued to the area where we had calculated it was most likely that that we would find them in the nearly total blackness of the Atlantic. Then, even though we had run the engines at the maximum allowable speed for hours we increased them slightly beyond their safe limits in order to reach the area where we had calculated that they had crashed as quickly as possible.
After about 40 minutes that seemed to be an eternity, in the near total blackness of the Atlantic where the sky and sea merged seamlessly, we saw absolutely nothing. We thought that we might have gone past the calculated crash site or had somehow miscalculated the heading, so we decided to turn around and retrace our path in case we had missed them.
As we began a left turn to reverse our course, out of the right cockpit window the copilot said he saw what appeared to be a faint glimmer of light. The pilot and I looked and did not see any kind of light but he insisted that he had seen it, but it had disappeared. We felt that it had perhaps been a reflection of an interior light. Just to make certain, we returned to our original course, cleaned the windows, turned off all the interior aircraft lights, shielded all the instrument lighting, and focused on the near-total blackness ahead. After what seemed an eternity and unable to see any light, we made the decision to turn around. As the pilot began the turn to retrace our original path the copilot and I agreed that we thought we had seen a faint brief glimmer of light, but it had again disappeared. Once again, we pointed the plane toward where we thought we had seen the sporadic light. Fairly quickly we were rewarded by seeing a distant wisp of light, so faint it could have been an optical illusion. The light was visible for short periods of time then disappeared.
As we raced toward the faint light and rapidly closed the distance it became brighter and became recognizable as a single beam of light originating from the water.
As we passed over the beam of light, we dropped one of our one million candle power flares that we carried as a part of our rescue equipment. When the flare was dropped, a parachute would open and the flare would slowly drift toward the water, brilliantly illuminating anything below it, and the surrounding area. What the light from the flare illuminated was five guys who incredibly, were holding onto a single small life raft and there was no sign of the plane, it had obviously sunk. We saw disturbances in the water around the raft and on the next pass over them we dropped “Shark Chaser,” a solution with a yellow dye that contained shark-repellent chemicals in order to eliminate them from that threat. On the third pass, we dropped Rescue Kits, each kit containing 2 inflatable life rafts separated by hundreds of feet of nylon rope and containers containing food and survival equipment. they were designed to be dropped upwind of the crash victims so that they would drift to the victims and encircle them so that they could get into the rafts and out of the water.
Meanwhile, the weather had become very stormy and even though daylight was breaking it was still extremely difficult to see them. We performed that sequence 3 times and were able to get the Rescue Kits very close, once within about 40 feet of them but the weather was so violent that they still were not able to reach them. I remember it getting very quiet in the cockpit and the plane as the reality set in that since we only carried four, we were down to our last Rescue Kit, we were out of Shark Chaser and our fuel was getting dangerously low. Somehow in all the excitement, we had not thought about our remaining fuel and the Bermuda Tower radioed and reminded us that we were in danger. The safe decision would have been to leave immediately, but instead, we circled again getting into position for our last attempt and we all knew this had to be “do or die.” We had fought all night long and we all knew that if we lost these guys it would haunt us the rest of our lives so we all agreed I don’t remember who said it, or if it was even said out loud, but the message that was ringing in our heads was very clear and strong …“Let’s go hand it to them!”
We brought the plane in as low and as slow as possible. We were so low that the plane felt very much like it was bouncing on the waves and the danger of going so slow that we fell out of the sky became very real. In my middle position, focused on the instruments and controls, I felt like I was standing on the back of a bucking horse. As we turned in for the final drop run, I looked up and outside of the Pilot side window and I was startled to see the people in the water around the raft so close that I seemed to establish eye contact with one of the guys and they seemed to be slightly above us!
To stay airborne, we had to maintain a speed of about 120 miles per hour and in the split-second timing required, our guys got the last Rescue Kit out to them. At the same time that we released the Kit, we must have been hit by a larger-than-normal wave, but all the cockpit windows were covered, and I looked like we might be in the ocean. We applied maximum power to the engines, hesitated briefly but roared into action, and climbed clear of the water. As we climbed out and circled, we saw the guys climbing into the rafts that we had just dropped. They now had food, water, warmth, protection from the elements, and radio contact with the Coast Guard ship that was on the way to pick them up. We all gave loud cheers of relief and expressed our giddy excitement at our success.
The excitement ended rather abruptly when we calculated our distance back to Bermuda and our remaining fuel. We had very definitely stayed over the safe limit and now it was going to be a challenge not to become a casualty of our success.
The next hour-and-a-half flight back to the island became a very precise exercise in fuel management, leaning the gas/air mixture to the engines and operating them at the speed that produced the most power while burning the least amount of fuel. As the Flight Engineer, that was my job and for the entire time of the return, I remained focused on every possible way that fuel could be conserved and give us the best chance for survival. The pilot continually searched for the best altitude that had fuel-burning headwinds and possibly find a tailwind that would be an aid to our fuel conservation efforts. The Co-Pilot continually worked the radios, alerting everyone of our possible need for emergency assistance, or rescue, and keeping them informed of our exact position should ditching become necessary. Also, all active airport traffic had to be held up at the airport when it became apparent that we only had fuel, if we made it at all, for a straight-in approach without the possibility of going around for a second chance.
As Bermuda came into sight, it still looked like a long way away, and looking at the fuel gauges I personally felt we probably would not make it, but we had our flotation equipment on and were prepared for a crash landing, but we kept flying. We finally reached the Island, put down the landing gear and the pilot made a very smooth landing! For the second time in that day, a giddy celebration filled the airplane, but this celebration had one other element … relief! We turned off the active Runway and as we taxied toward our hangar one of the engines ran out of gas and stopped. Another engine started sputtering so we decided to shut everything down and we were towed to our Hanger rather than possibly causing engine damage.
About a week went by, and in the intervening time, we had been told that the Coast Guard had successfully picked everyone up and they were in reasonably good shape, with no major injuries. They had spent some time in the hospital, were being released to go back to their homes in Canada and a meeting was being set up so that they could thank us personally. The meeting was set up for late in the day, about 5 PM and that time of day to a 20-year-old who was ending his work day, that was beer time! We shook their hands and suffered through the brief meeting but instead of hanging around talking with them about the rescue and other things, me, the Paramedics, and the other enlisted crew members, escaped the meeting and we literally ran to go drink beer. We thought we had our priorities straight, no sense spending a lot of time on old news when there was good cold beer to drink!
After many years of simply not thinking about the significance, this year I decided that this story is probably worth telling. Five lives were saved by the guidance provided by the beam of a single flashlight. I am now extremely interested in the generations of people that were created and what effect that beam has had on the planet.
Later in my life, I made up a description of Air Rescue that was a result of many times I have responded:
Because people do things to put themselves in bad situations, as First Responders, it is our job to risk our butts to hopefully get them safely out of those situations.
Writing this story is just the beginning. My goal is to find those guys, if they are still alive, and if not, their descendants. I would like to ask them what it was like to be in the ocean for all that time, watching us miss them, and many of the details that I missed because I was rushing out to get a beer!
