35 Miles from Shore (24 page)

The combination of the fatigue and the salt water in his stomach made him queasy. He leaned over the side and vomited. Not wanting to be impaired by illness, he reached around the raft looking for the survival kit, hoping to find some sea sickness pills. He found a pouch hanging from one side of the raft and began rummaging through its contents. He spotted a small package of pills, but the label identified the pills as air sickness pills. Balsey took the useless pills and tossed them as far as he could. What he really needed was an Alka Seltzer. He tried burping away the gas and the sickness eventually subsided. He turned his attention back to the contents of the
survival kit. He found two smoke flares. He grabbed one and removed the cap, but nothing happened. It was a dud. He tossed it into the water. He pulled the cap on the second flare; the puff of orange smoke it expelled was barely visible. He threw the flare overboard. He was digging through the survival pouch to see what other items it contained when he thought he heard the sound of a helicopter. He looked skyward and saw a helicopter approaching from the southwest.

Hugh swam toward the partially inflated raft. It was a difficult task as he was swimming against the wind and the waves. Adding to his difficulty was the life vest, which had been causing him problems almost from the time he had inflated it. The back panel tended to ride up his back, causing the vest to float away from his body. He lost sight of the raft several times in the rough seas. When he finally reached the raft, he found that it had completely deflated. His first thought was to try and tug the raft back to the slide. He grabbed hold of it and started swimming toward the slide but quickly tired. He saw the survival kit floating in a pouch attached to the raft. He ripped open the pouch and found a small hand-held air pump. He felt around the raft for an air valve to which he could connect the pump. He found air valves on each side of the raft. This particular raft had two separate inflation chambers, presumably to avoid full deflation if one side were to develop a leak. Hugh tried to thread the pump onto the valve. It was no easy task because the connector on the pump was rigidly attached. He had to keep the pump perpendicular to the raft. After some struggle, he managed to thread it on, but he was faced with another problem. The pump kept backfilling with water. The only way to make it work was for him to push himself underwater and pump with his hands and arms high above his head in order to keep the pump above the surface. Each time he
would come up for air the pump would be forced back down into the water. He would then have to pump the water from the pump before he could get more air into the raft. Eventually, he got enough air into one side of the raft to give it some buoyancy. But when he tried to close the air valve so he could remove the pump, he found that the valve was rusted and unmovable. Hugh turned the raft around to check the other air valve. That valve turned normally, so he unthreaded the pump and connected it to the opposite side. His plan was to inflate the good side of the raft, then pump up the bad side, leaving the pump connected to that side to act as a plug, knowing that he could simply pump more air into the raft as needed. He finished pumping up the good side and clambered atop the partially inflated raft. He quickly sank into the water. There was barely enough buoyancy in the small four-man raft to keep him afloat.

Wilfred Spencer was alone in the water. From the wind against his face, he knew that he was being blown downwind from the main group of survivors. He had watched the civilian plane drop its two life rafts. Sometime later, he spotted the navigator sitting atop a flotation device. Wilfred was sure it was the navigator because he could see the pink life vest. He wasn't certain what Hugh was sitting on. It didn't look like a life raft. He also spotted a large group of survivors gathered in a circle around another flotation device.
*
He started swimming toward the survivors but stopped when he saw the Coast Guard aircraft drop a life raft. The raft landed about the same distance from him as the main group of survivors. Wilfred also knew the importance of a life raft in preventing hypothermia and decided to go after the
raft instead. He didn't get very far before realizing that reaching the raft was going to be more difficult than he first assumed. The life vest proved to be more of a hindrance than a help. No matter how hard he pulled on the straps the vest wanted to float away from his body. He felt that his clothes were hampering his progress, so he kicked off his shoes and removed his pants and set off once again for the raft. But before he could get to the raft, a Coast Guard helicopter came into view.

Rick Arnold saw the Coast Guard seaplane pass overhead. He watched as a bright orange object fell from the plane and hit the water. Rick's fist thought was that it was shark repellant. He couldn't imagine what else it could be. It was too small to be any kind of flotation device. He knew the Caribbean was notorious for its shark-infested waters. Maybe the pilot had seen sharks from the air and that was why they had dropped the repellant.
*
From that point on the fear of sharks was constant, especially when someone's feet or legs brushed up against his. Every few minutes he'd check his hand to see how badly he was bleeding.

Other passengers voiced their concerns about the possibility of sharks. Some made a conscious effort to distance themselves from passengers who were bleeding. The fact was that the plane had ditched in an area of the Caribbean known by sport fishermen as “shark gulch.” They could not have gone down in a more dangerous location. While that fact would have done little to calm their fears, there was one bit of information concerning sharks that would have gone a long way toward alleviating their concerns: Sharks, as it turns out, avoid the surface in turbulent seas due to a lack of oxygen.
Unaware of this fact of marine biology, the survivors spent much of their time in constant fear of being attacked from below.

The fear of sharks made many of those around the escape slide question the actions of the crew. When the captain and navigator left the main group to swim toward the two life rafts, some of the passengers felt that they were only looking after themselves, especially when they didn't return with either raft.

It was also obvious to everyone that the co-pilot was safely atop the slide while they remained in the chilly water. It didn't help that he was also insisting that there wasn't room for anyone else and that any attempts to get on the slide might tip the whole thing over. Harry tried to ease the tension by making a joke about his watch, which he commented was still ticking (a reference to a popular television commercial at the time).

Tobias Cordeiro, who was in the water around the escape slide, probed Harry for details. “How far are we from land?” he asked.

“About thirty-five miles,” Harry replied, demonstrating a degree of situational awareness prior to the ditching.

“How long will it take for a boat to get here?” Tobias asked.

“A couple of hours,” Harry said solemnly.

Tobias hadn't contemplated rescue by helicopter. He could only picture boats racing to the scene. The planes circling overhead offered little comfort. Tobias prayed silently. He knew it would be dark soon. He wasn't sure how many of those in the water would last through the night.

Not long after this conversation, the first helicopter appeared off in the distance. A second helicopter was spotted minutes later. The rescue had begun.

T
HE CLOSEST HELICOPTERS TO THE SITE OF THE
ditching were the four CH-46 Marine helicopters that had departed off the deck of the
Guadalcanal
. They were approximately eighty miles away; about forty minutes flying time in ideal conditions. Major Dennis Beckman piloted the lead helicopter. Their initial vectors to the scene were provided by Helicopter Directional Control (HDC) aboard the
Guadalcanal
. HDC was the command center for helicopter operations. Beckman was told that the aircraft had ditched thirty-five miles out on the 080 degree bearing of the St. Croix radio beacon.
*
The four helicopters initially climbed to 1,000 feet but were forced to descend as they approached St. Croix due to deteriorating weather. Heavy rain and poor visibility eventually forced the four helicopters to separate into pairs. By the time they reached the general vicinity of the ditching they were as low as 200 feet.

John Barber was flying in EM-13 behind Major Beckman. He was sitting in his crew seat listening in on the intercom communication system (ICS). He and Vince Perron had already rigged up the hoist system and attached the rescue sling. This involved stringing the cable from the hoist mechanism located on the ceiling aft of the forward bulkhead through the combination pulley/guillotine mounted directly above the rescue hatch, more commonly referred to as the hell-hole. The hell-hole was a three-foot by three-foot opening in the bottom of the helicopter. Barber could hear pilots Art Nash and Bill Murphy complaining about not being able to locate the scene and wasting precious fuel in the process.

“Why the fuck doesn't he ask San Juan for a fix,” a frustrated Art Nash lamented over the intercom, referring to the lead helicopter. Art was receiving the St. Croix radio beacon, though he still had no way of determining distance. They didn't know that the Coast Guard had dropped a radio beacon that would have led them directly to the scene.

Finally, Beckman was able to raise the Coast Guard HU-16. By this time, however, two helicopters had already arrived on the scene and a second Coast Guard helicopter was en route. With two aircraft circling and three helicopters performing rescues, Tom Blank, the On Scene Commander, determined that the weather was too poor to bring in more helicopters. He requested that the four Marine helicopters fly to St. Croix to await further instructions. The second pair of helicopters that had departed off the
Guadalcanal
was also told to land in St. Croix. A total of six Marine helicopters stood standby on the island of St. Croix, where preparations for treating the survivors had already begun.

Lt. Commander James Rylee and his crew had departed from the Roosevelt Roads Naval station some twenty-five minutes after the
four Marine helicopters had departed off the
Guadalcanal
. They were soon confronted with the same poor weather conditions that the Marine pilots were dealing with. Rylee brought the helicopter down to four hundred feet to stay below the overcast. He tried using the heading hold on the autopilot, but when he let go of the pedals the helicopter wouldn't hold its heading. He also discovered that the radio altimeter wasn't working. The radio altimeter gives the pilot his height above the ground, or in this case, height above the water. Loss of either component meant the loss of auto-hovering capability. He would have to hand-fly the entire flight.

Approaching St. Croix, Rylee was told that a Coast Guard HU-16 Albatross was circling the scene. He tried contacting the Coast Guard aircraft using several UHF frequencies but was unable to establish radio contact. He did, however, pick up a Morse code signal on the guard frequency. He tuned his ADF to 243.0 and noticed that the needle was picking up a signal, so he started tracking toward the station. He was certain that it would lead him to the accident scene. He and Hartman kept their eyes peeled outside, looking for any sign of the survivors. At 17:20 (5:20
P.M.
), Rylee came upon the accident scene. They were the first rescuers to reach the scene. The survivors had been in the water for just over an hour and a half.

The first thing Rylee and Hartman saw was the large group of survivors gathered around what looked like a life raft. They also saw a number of people floating independently from the main group. The scene was littered with debris: seat cushions, small pieces of metal, insulation, suitcases, articles of clothing, and a few larger pieces of a honeycomb material that were two to three feet in diameter. There were also bodies floating face down in the water. Lindley opened the side door of the helicopter and rigged up the hoist system. They had two methods of hoisting people into the helicopter: the standard rescue sling and the Boyd seat, also referred to as a
rescue seat. The Boyd seat resembles a boat anchor with three symmetrically spaced prongs designed to allow a person to sit on the prongs. The advantage of the Boyd seat was that two people could be hoisted up at the same time. Lindley first hooked up the rescue sling but changed his mind, thinking he could get more people into the helicopter faster with the Boyd seat.

The first person they came to was a lone male in a large life raft. Rylee maneuvered the helicopter directly over the raft and set up a hover at about fifty feet. Lindley leaned out the right side and lowered the rescue seat to the occupant in the raft. The rescue seat was immediately caught by the strong winds. The pendulum like motion of the seat made it impossible for the man inside the raft to grab hold of it. Lindley told Rylee to let down another twenty feet, hoping that the shorter distance would negate the effect of the wind. But as the helicopter inched lower, the downwash from the rotor blades pushed the raft away from the helicopter. Normally, in a low hover situation like this one, Lindley would have had lateral control over the helicopter through the use of a joystick located at the rescue station. But the loss of the auto-hover meant that Lindley could not use the joystick to control the lateral movement of the helicopter. He had to give Rylee constant voice commands: left, right, forward, up, down, back. Lindley guided Rylee back over the raft, but the raft, with nothing to weigh it down, was tossed around like it was a child's bathtub toy. Before they could back off and make a third attempt, the raft folded in two, trapping the lone occupant. Lindley watched helplessly as the man struggled to extricate himself from the sandwiched life raft. Eventually, the man was able to free himself. He jumped into the water and swam a safe distance away. Seeing this, Lindley lowered the rescue seat into the water. This time the man had no trouble grabbing and climbing onto the rescue seat. As the survivor was raised toward the helicopter, Lindley noticed that the man was wearing epaulets; he counted
four stripes. “I'm the captain,” the man said as he was pulled inside. Lindley directed him to the cockpit so he could brief the two pilots. He then removed the Boyd seat and replaced it with the rescue sling, feeling that the Boyd seat was too dangerous to use in these conditions.