Hi Kate, thanks for the compliment. Yes my Dad was in the RAAF too... Ground crew, mainly at Pembroke Dock during the war. I guess that's where I get my love of aircraft.
We were flying from Guam to Fairchild AF Base, via Wake, & Johnson Islands to Hickham, Travis, then Fairchild. A full 5 days of flying on a fully loaded with spare B-36 engines & equipment, 5 maintenance personnel & a full C-124 Crew. We had departed Johnson on a long leg to Hickham & about 4 hours out when we were diverted to an area where a Navy P-2V Neptune had gone down at sea as we were the closest to the area. We broke out all of the binoculars we had & started the search from about 3000 ft altitude. After about 2 hours into the search we located the crew in a life raft after spotting the mile or two of orange dye the crew had dispersed into the water. It was vertually impossible to keep the raft in sight as most of the time the raft is either going up a swell or coming back down, very little horizontal time to spot the raft. We dropped all of the emergency equipment we had on board to them & advised them a SA-16 had been dispatched from Johnson to pick them up, & I believe a couplenof other surface craft were also dispatched . We had to return to Johnson as our fuel was running low. about a week later we arrived at Fairchild, just in time to see the artcle in the local newspaper of the crews rescue. Times like that make me proud to have served for 21 years in the USAF.
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