Aviation History - January 2016

january 2016 AH 41

PREVIOUS PAGES: ©1980 KEITH FERRIS; OPPOSITE: U.S. AIR FORCE; TOP: U.S. COAST GUARD; BOTTOM: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM Q 69475

Richard Bell-Davies became a Royal Naval Air

Service pilot in 1913, at a time when British aviators were all

hyphenated, peers or rich, sometimes all three: Bell-Davies

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ing the British during Churchill’s Folly—the disastrous

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quickly decided to land and retrieve him, but his biggest

concern was that Smylie might have also been carrying a

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much more valuable than a newly minted sub,” Bell-Davies

wrote in his autobiography—and he knew he could only

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Smylie was alone, fortunately, and while a squad of

Bulgarian troops pounded toward the airplane, Bell-Davies

crammed Smylie into the Nieuport’s footwell, where the

young sub crouched on all fours between the rudder bar and

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from the various rods, cables and controls, but better that

than spending the rest of the war in a Bulgarian prisoner

WN_IZKIUX

W

hen I was a young

merchant seaman, we

called Coast Guards-

men “knee-deeps,”

implying that they never got

far from the safety of rivers

and shores. There is no

greater refutation of that

condescension than the

Coast Guard’s rescue of 42 of

47 souls from the fishing ship

Alaska Ranger in late March

2008, plucking the surviving

men (and one woman) from

the bitter-cold Bering Sea,

which is plenty more than

knee-deep. And doing much

of it at night, amid 20-foot

waves, 30-knot winds, -24

degree wind chill and snow

showers. Twenty of the

res cues were made by two

Coast Guard helicopters: a

Sikorsky HH-60 Jayhawk and

a Euro copter HH-65 Dolphin.

The rest of the survivors were

picked up by Alaska Ranger’s

sister ship Alaska Warrior

while a Coast Guard C-130

orbited overhead coordinat-

ing communications and

searching for life vest strobes

scattered amid a mile-long

drift zone.

The helos were 120 miles

from the nearest helipad.

The big Jayhawk could do

midair refueling by picking

up a hose from the cutter

Munro, which was steaming

toward the sinking ship, and

the Dolphin was able to land

on the cutter, though with

great difficulty on a severely

pitching, rolling deck. During

the rescue, the Dolphin

landed aboard to drop off an

overload of freezing fisher-

men with barely 20 gallons

of jet fuel remaining—which,

for a 1,700-hp aircraft, is little

more than fumes.

Bravest of the brave were

the Coastie rescue swimmers,

who were dropped into the

water to help survivors into

lifting slings or baskets. One

swimmer, on his first for-real

rescue mission, was left in a

life raft for an hour, after giv-

ing up his space on the helo

to a hypothermic survivor.

BELL-DAVIES

MADE HISTORY

BY PERFORMING

THE WORLD’S

FIRST RESCUE

MISSION BY AN

AIRCRAFT.

The First

of Many

ALASKA

RANGER

arctic recovery

Crewmen on the U.S. Coast

Guard cutter Munro assist a

member of the fishing ship

Alaska Ranger‘s crew.

Richard Bell-Davies