Saturday night under way on board the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Spencer (WMEC-905) is traditionally "morale night." The night of 30 October 1999 was particularly special; it was Halloween eve and included a costume contest with a prize drawing. Then it was back to work as the crew entered the third week of a District One Operation Atlantic Venture fisheries patrol.
It was business as usual on the bridge, keeping a vigilant watch as the Spencer made her way along a track that would carry her to Closed Area 2 off the coast of New England. As many watch standers can attest, more often than not the watch drags by uneventfully until the last hour or so. That was exactly the case on the Halloween midwatch.
At approximately 0220, Petty Officer Steve Oliver, on watch in the combat information center (CIC), copied a radio transmission from the District One Command Center directing the USCGC Reliance (WMEC-615) to investigate the last known position of an aircraft. Within minutes, Ensign Cristian Munoz, deck watch officer at the time, notified the operations officer and the commanding officer and was directed to alter course. We came about and made the best speed possible to the position more than 100 miles away.
Details were scarce; the only information CIC had received was that a Boeing 767 had lost radio communications and dropped off radar shortly after departing New York's JFK airport. The USCGC Monomoy (WPB-1326), which had been much closer to the site and could make more than 25 knots, arrived at the aircraft's last known position shortly after 0500 on 31 October.
The Merchant Marine Academy training vessel Kings Pointer, already on scene, reported to the Monomoy that she was in the middle of an oil sheen and that wreckage was all around them. Both the Monomoy and the Kings Pointer launched their rigid-hull inflatable small boats to search for survivors and collect debris. An HU-25 from Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod had dropped a datum marker buoy earlier to help monitor the current's set and drift. By 0615, the Kings Pointer had recovered two aircraft seats, and the Monomoy soon after that began recovering human remains and personal belongings. At approximately 0940, a piece of wreckage with the EgyptAir logo was recovered, confirming the Boeing 767 had been found.
The Spencer assumed duty as on-scene commander while en route and made preparations to launch her embarked helicopter to aid in the search for survivors. Details continued to filter in, and we learned that the flight was a passenger aircraft bound from New York City to Cairo, Egypt. District One Command Center confirmed the plane was EgyptAir Flight 990. Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City's HH-65 Dolphin helicopter, under the command of Lieutenant John Brenner, was attached to the Spencer and by 0700 had joined two other aircraft in search patterns around what was now the established crash site of Flight 990.
When news arrived that as many as 217 people were presumed on board the aircraft, Command Chief David Candee assembled the crew to brief them on the graphic sights they might expect to see. He realized that many of the crew, some only 18 or 19 years old, would have little idea of what they were to face. "All the training in the world and years of experience in search and rescue cannot possibly prepare you for what we may see today . . . " he told them. Minutes later, Commander William Semrau, the commanding officer, addressed the crew at quarters and outlined the hard work ahead.
The Spencer's combat information center watch team took advantage of the several hours transit time to develop search plans for the multiple search-and-rescue units that were on scene or en route. CIC personnel controlled and deconflicted nine aircraft and six cutters. Using the new Shipboard Command and Control System (SCCS-270) including the Global Command and Control System-- Maritime, Chief Gary Parker's team employed the latest technology to establish datum, compute the most probable locations to start search plans, and track the significant floating debris.
Petty Officer Kurt Emrich, the ship's primary air controller, soon found himself controlling up to six Coast Guard and Navy aircraft, significantly more than the two or three aircraft he controls on a typical patrol.
These multiple air assets worked with a variety of cutters including the new 87-foot patrol boat Hammerhead (WPB87302) and the recently commissioned buoy tender Juniper (WLB-201). All of these had been diverted from their usual roles of law enforcement, aids to navigation, and maritime safety to participate in the Coast Guard's best-known mission: search and rescue. The cutters Monomoy, Bainbridge Island (WPB-1343), Chinook (WPB-87308), and Wrangell (WPB-1332) were on hand conveying evidence to and from shore installations for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Transportation Safety Board. This probably was the largest collection of Coast Guard assets in one area since the TWA 800 crash in 1996.
Managing all of these resources and using them to their fullest capacity were daunting tasks. Many of the crew worked around the clock. A cutter's overall on-scene time must be weighed against crew fatigue (both the 87-foot and 110-foot patrol boats, flexible as they are, can exhaust a crew quickly in heavy seas). Fuel and water play not only a logistical role, but are important to the small cutters' stability. Combine these concerns with the needs of both criminal and accident investigators and the variables increase exponentially for an on-scene commander.
The tactical picture changed every few hours, requiring a complete reassessment of assets, flight hours, and area coverage. Tactics had to be balanced with the needs of investigators, not to mention the weather which created a dynamic, ever-changing debris field. Tasking for individual units changed often as their decks filled with debris, at one point the Monomoy and the Reliance each had more than 1,000 pounds of debris on the main deck, As on-scene commander, the Spencer coordinated transportation of Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) personnel, media, and additional flight crews, as well as arranged for vertical replenishment at sea for the Juniper to take on additional food stores.
Crews hoped to locate survivors. The debris field was scattered over six square miles, and rotary currents quickly spread the thousands of pieces of debris, most of which were less than two foot square in size. There was a heavy smell of jet fuel in the air and the sheen on the water prevented the ship's evaporators from making water. When night fell, additional personnel manned three search lights on the flying bridge. Commander Semrau met several times after dark with key crew members to plan the next day's efforts. He was able to use the cutter's extensive communications suite to relay plans to the district command center and to direct search units. The 270-foot medium-endurance cutter with her communications, electronic, and helicopter capabilities was an ideal platform for this type of mission.
The Spencer's motor surf boat and rigid-hull inflatable collected wreckage, which constituted evidence, and crews exercised care to preserve complete integrity. Small-boat crews also had the grim task of collecting human remains, which were relatively minimal. This task called for extreme care in cataloging, marking, and preserving the remains because of their potential vital use in the investigation. Seaman Apprentice James Gastringer, like many before him, joined the Coast Guard to help others; only 19, he is one of the Spencer's youngest crew members and served in the motor surf boat. He collected, segregated, and transported both debris and human remains between vessels, doing what Admiral James Loy, Commandant of the Coast Guard, refers to as " ... the ugly part of our job."
Coast Guard Group Woods Hole, the District One Command Center, and the Incident Command Center at Newport, Rhode Island, provided extra support at a moment's notice.
New watch teams were established. Those who were not already standing a port and starboard watch rotation (six hours on, six hours off) on the bridge or CIC were assigned to recovery teams. The Spencer alone recovered many personal effects and received many more from smaller vessels on scene. Wallets, portfolios, purses, etc., were logged and inventoried, then locked away in the cutter's small arms magazine. Petty Officer Ronald Hill, the ship's corpsman, selected a team to account for and carefully inventory the human remains collected. He provided training for all members who would come in contact with not just human remains, but any debris that had made contact with human remains. Fortunately, the amount of human remains was minimal when compared to other tragedies such as the TWA 800 crash. Exposure was limited in this case to more seasoned personnel.
Lieutenant Commander Greg Hitchen, our executive officer, worked closely with the two embarked FBI agents to coordinate and supervise recovery teams. Everything we found was divided into three groups: human remains, personal effects, and aircraft debris. Space proved to be a challenge as available areas for storage of the debris diminished.
Air crews that staged from the Spencer were considerate of the crew's lack of news and delivered several newspapers. The mission took on a more personal role as faces and names were associated with the effort. The crew understood why such a small amount of debris was actually on the surface when NTSB experts determined that the 767 probably had entered the water at a steep angle, unlike TWA 8001, which had exploded in mid-air.
The weather was deteriorating. By the third day, helicopter operations from the cutters had to be suspended because conditions exceeded pitch-and-roll limitations. Shore-based aircraft continued to operate. As the weather continued to worsen at the crash site, most vessels made their way back to safe refuge. By the early morning hours of 3 November, the low pressure system had developed into a storm with sustained winds at 60 knots and confused seas reaching 20 feet. The Spencer maintained station through the storm to protect the scene and to look for additional victims and debris. Our skipper also felt it important to maintain " . . . that spiritual connection with the families ashore and continue to 'stand the watch' until recovery efforts could resume." Launching the small boats was impossible, and when significant items were spotted an attempt was made to recover them with grappling hooks; more often, lookouts could only record a description of the object along with its latitude and longitude. We had a casualty on board during the 24-hour storm: one broken arm caused by the ship's rolling.
When it was over, even less debris was left on the surface. There was hope among the crew that such a powerful storm would have caused more of the wreckage or, in particular, victims to surface. The thinking among the crew was that if they could not bring home survivors, bodies at least could be returned. By the sixth and final day that we were on scene, however, not a single body had been recovered.
As the weather calmed, other ships resumed the recovery effort. Among them was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's ship Whiting (S-329) and the USNS Mohawk (T-ATF170), both equipped with side-scanning sonars, and the USS Grapple (ARS-53) with her underwater drone. The Grapple relied on the sonar images to take station and launch the drone, which relayed images and used its mechanical arms to sift through wreckage with the primary objective of retrieving the aircraft's black box data and voice recorders.
Early on the morning of 6 November, the USS Austin (LPD-4) relieved the Spencer as on-scene commander. A comprehensive day-by-day slide package of the search effort prepared by Petty Officer Andrew Garcia was transmitted to the Austin to illustrate areas searched, items recovered, and assets available.
The relief went smoothly and our job was over.
Ensign Howard is the Weapons Officer on board the USCGC Spencer (WMEC-905).