Already hot and muggy in the predawn hours of 19 July 1980, our day began in the barrack’s parking lot as the 12-man aircrew climbed into battered Navy pickups and drove to our P-3 Orion parked on the flight line.
We had landed at Naval Air Station Agana, Guam, the day before after island-hopping across the Pacific from our home base in California. It took four days. Massive thunderstorms rumbling across the Marianas had required a diversion to Kwajalein, delaying us by a day.
Finally arriving, we were quickly informed by our harried squadron-operations officer that a Pacific Missionary Aviation Beech 18, flying from Yap Island to Woleai Atoll with seven souls on board, was missing.
He added: “You’re the only ones available—it’s your job to find them.”
At the flight line, each man prepared for the mission ahead. The radio operator picked up crypto codes and tested his radios; the three sensor operators checked out acoustic-detection equipment and radars, while the flight engineer and second mechanic geared up to fuel the ship. Lieutenant Ty Thomas, our patrol-plane commander, and Lieutenant Roger Warburton, the crew tactical coordinator, got the latest search info from the tactical support center (TSC) briefers. As the junior pilot, I preflighted the plane.
Civilian Cross-Section = Solid Reserve Team
Although we were an ad hoc crew brought together for the transpacific flight to Guam, we worked well as a team because of the camaraderie of our unit, Patrol Squadron 65, out of NAS Point Mugu, California. Based within an easy drive of Los Angeles, we reservists tended to be an eclectic bunch. Among us were truckers, lawyers, teachers, engineers, movie-industry stuntmen, and a professional astronomer. We found ourselves on Guam for our annual two-week active-duty requirement with the Naval Reserve.
With the Cold War warming up again, squadron crews such as ours would range throughout the western Pacific from bases in the Philippines, Thailand, and Okinawa—some crews on the prowl for Soviet subs, others flying patrols off the coast of Vietnam looking for Vietnamese boat people and the pirates who preyed on them. Most of us welcomed the chance to temporarily get away from the daily grind of our civilian lives, to find a little adventure. The challenge of this rescue mission was why I had joined the Reserves.
Fueled for a 14-hour flight and heavy, we took to the runway before dawn and, accompanied by the roar of the Orion’s four big Allison turboprop engines, lumbered into the night sky. As we climbed south toward Woleai Atoll, the two navigators on board, Roger and Lieutenant Dave Gemmill, prepared a search plan. Weary off-duty crew members found various places to sleep as we flew to the search area.
Little was known about the missing plane; the TSC staff informed us that the missionary pilot, Jerry Roquemore, was highly regarded and that an electronic locating transmitter (ELT) was on board.
The twin-engine Beech 18 had departed Yap Island in rainy, turbulent weather the previous day for the two-hour–plus flight to Woleai Atoll, 400 miles away. When Roquemore, a 46-year-old veteran aviator, did not sight the atoll at his expected arrival time, he began to worry. Navigating by dead reckoning, he realized by observing the whitecaps below that the actual tailwinds were much stronger than forecast, causing him to overfly Woleai.
Quickly reversing course, but with no radio beacon to home into—ironically, one was on board, to be placed on Woleai to guide future flights—the pilot commenced a visual search for the tiny atoll barely awash in the sea. Unable to find Woleai, he decided to return to Yap, which had a beacon.
He never made it.
Low on fuel and with no reliable beacon signal from Yap, Roquemore contacted Guam radio for a direction-finder fix. Guam wasn’t able to give him a good position. One of his passengers, a Woleai fisherman, saw birds that never venture far from land, so Roquemore knew they were close to safety—but what direction? After nearly seven hours in the air and running on empty, he advised Guam radio that he was unsure of his position and would ditch while he still had fuel and engine power.
Sharp Eyes on Woleai
We were briefed that the plane had splashed down near Woleai Atoll. Lieutenant Roger Warburton, a big, colorful character and undercover cop in civilian life was responsible for implementing our search. From his tactical console in the Orion’s windowless midsection (called the “tube” by aircrew) his job as tactical coordinator was to evaluate information from various sensor operators and, much like a circus ringmaster, synchronize individual efforts—a must when performing the Orion’s signature mission of antisubmarine warfare. Today’s assignment—if successful—would be more rewarding.
We arrived off Woleai Atoll just after first light and began flying our search pattern, a ladder-like grid plotted on a navigation chart and aligned along the probable flight path of the lost aircraft. Skies were partially overcast, visibility limited by haze. All bubble windows were manned by sharp-eyed sailors trained to spot submarine periscopes. But something was missing. If there were survivors, we should have been hearing the distinctive whoop of the ELT signal in our headphones. We weren’t.
Having participated in three previous search-and-rescue missions that ended in disappointment, I knew that sighting small rafts on the open ocean would be tough. I thought about a search years earlier when I flew in a massive hunt for three Navy aircraft mechanics who had gone for a day’s fishing off Guam and never returned. We searched around the clock for a week, motivated by the sailors’ families who waited anxiously on the ramp as we taxied in from our flights. They counted on us. Surely we could find a 17-foot boat with sailors on board who wanted to be found. We never did.
Presently finding nothing in the waters surrounding the atoll, we extended our patrol northwest toward Yap Island, 400 miles away. Without the crucial ELT signal to track, we anticipated a long search; to save fuel and increase our flying time, we shut down and feathered the number-one engine. We knew we were flying through a history book, with wreckage from World War II still visible throughout this isolated region of the Pacific. The very remoteness that allowed sunken landing craft or rusting amphibious tanks awash in the surf to remain in place also made communication with the outside world difficult. Navy briefers had advised that although some of the islands we would come across had radios, it would take a while to fire up generators that powered them. If we needed to communicate, we were to buzz and try calling 30 minutes later.
Thinking that some islanders might have heard or seen the missionary plane fly by, we buzzed islands that resembled scenes out of South Pacific, with vibrant blue waters, swaying palm trees, and neat little thatched-roofed huts on stilts. Over the intercom someone commented that he wouldn’t be surprised to see Mitzi Gaynor waving from a beach below. Neither Mitzi nor anyone else answered our radio calls.
Increasing Desperation and a Glimmer of Hope?
As we flew our search pattern through tropical skies near the equator, the compressor supplying cooling air to the cockpit failed. It quickly became a hothouse. Before long, the forward radar, its heat-sensitive electronic guts also located in the cockpit—fried itself. We were down to an eyeball search.
After seven hours, our early optimism began to fade. We should have heard an ELT signal by now. Years later, I would read that psychological studies done on people involved in search-and-rescue operations show initially there is hope, followed by doubt; when finding nothing, the rescuers question the areas they’re searching. We were in the latter stages of this process, still determined, but feeling that either there were no survivors or we were looking in all the wrong places.
But there were survivors. Roquemore, using all the skills of a seasoned bush pilot, had successfully ditched, dropping with perfect timing and a tail-first thud onto the rough ocean swells. Lacking a shoulder harness, he had pitched forward into the instrument panel during the ditch, breaking his nose and badly cutting up his face.
Directed by Roquemore, one of his passengers, Navy Seabee Lieutenant Mike Schaefer, got everybody out onto the wing after impact. The plane stayed afloat for three minutes, allowing time for the rafts to be inflated and the bleeding controlled on the injured pilot. Blood would attract sharks.
Behind our cockpit, the radioman’s teletype machine clattered with an incoming message: A U.S. Coast Guard vessel, the USCGC Basswood (WLB-388), was steaming down from Guam to join the search.
Yap Island was now on the horizon and my navigation chart had a frequency for Yap Radio. Not expecting much, I dialed in the frequency and gave a call. Maybe someone would answer; maybe they knew something we didn’t. An eager voice promptly replied, “I heard the Navy was out looking; been hoping you’d call.” A local minister, Reverend Harald Gorges, on his own initiative, was doing what he could to help by monitoring the frequency.
After I told him about our lack of success, he responded with information we hadn’t gotten from official channels. “They tried coming back but didn’t make it . . . and just before ditching the pilot reported seeing birds that never fly more than 40 miles from land.”
“Any guesses where?” I radioed back.
Without hesitation he replied, “I think they went down to the northeast between Yap and Ulithi,” and added, “An Air Micronesia flight heard an ELT signal near that area about noon.”
Re-energized by the news, we raced north toward Ulithi.
Men Against the Sea
Aboard the rafts, the first night adrift had been a stormy one, bringing lightning and thick sheets of rain. Shivering with cold, the survivors struggled to keep the three rafts together in the roller-coaster waves. Elected raft captain by mutual consent and determined not to lose a man overboard, Lieutenant Schaefer had everyone pile into the largest of the three rafts and lash themselves in.
Sunrise brought calmer seas and hopes for a quick rescue. Later that afternoon, after the sun had been blazing down for hours on the cramped and exhausted survivors, with still no rescuers in sight, concern mounted that they might drift past Yap during the coming night.
Approaching Ulithi Atoll, we finally began picking up an intermittent ELT signal. Overhead, an Air Force C-130 had joined the hunt. Hopes of quickly finding the survivors were dashed when we realized their ELT was transmitting on a civilian VHF frequency. We could hear the signal, but it was incompatible with our military equipment, so we couldn’t home to it—no swift gallop to the rescue for us. Worse, it sounded loud and clear, and then randomly switched off.
Roger’s voice over the intercom betrayed the frustration we all felt: “OK . . . we need another plan . . . let’s huddle.”
Listening to the emergency signal, we realigned the search pattern again and again toward the loudest sector. The C-130 flying high overhead—also unable to home to the ELT—assisted by verifying when the emergency beacon switched off, confirming that we hadn’t flown beyond the beacon’s transmitting range and away from the survivors.
Were the survivors trying to save their ELT battery? We didn’t know. However tedious and time-consuming, groping our way toward the “noise” might work—if our fuel lasted.
We had now been flying at a low altitude for more than nine hours, burning through most of the 30 tons of fuel we had started with, and a glance at the fuel gauges indicated we were pushing it. Still, we had too much emotional energy invested to quit now; we needed to find these people! Besides, the Air Force was circling above, ready to swoop in and claim our bragging rights. Mustn’t allow that, better to burn into our fuel reserves.
And we knew we were close. The strident WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP of the emergency signal blared on the speakers. Extra “eyeballs” had crowded into the cockpit, intently scanning the sea and wanting to be the first to sight the survivors. Finally, our flight engineer, Chief Petty Officer Mike Glenn, a laconic man, gestured toward the one o’clock position and calmly said, “Look—there they are.”
They were barely a mile away, but we had almost missed them in the haze and ocean swells.
‘It’s Time to Go’
A spontaneous cheer erupted throughout the airplane as Ty banked hard and dove toward the rafts. We roared in low, very low, on three engines with landing lights flashing, and spat a sonobuoy (floating radio beacon) and smoke marker out the belly. It was our little impromptu victory dance—leaving no doubt in the rafts below that they had been found.
We got busy: The radioman flashed the position to the Basswood; she altered course for the pickup. I radioed the C-130 above, while Ty wrapped our Orion around for another pass. Yep . . . there were seven, all waving with real enthusiasm.
Roger, concerned about our fuel situation, then stepped into the sweltering cockpit and told us what we already knew: “It’s time to go.”
Roquemore had been the first to sight the low flying P-3 on the western horizon. After 27 hours in the rafts, the grateful survivors would spend their second night at sea as guests of the Coast Guard on board the Basswood.
Following medical attention, hot meals, and hot showers, the Basswood’s newest celebrities were invited to the ship’s movie: a disaster film—Airport.
They politely declined.