| When I arrived at the USCG Air Station in Bermuda in 1963, everyone was talking about the extended search for the 'Sulfur Queen'. In those days the term "Bermuda Triangle" was known, but it wasn't really taken seriously. The 'Sulfur Queen' was just a ship that had sunk without a trace. For those who had spent long hours searching an endless ocean, this was not particularly hard to believe. It's disappearance seemed to become a mystery when it was written about a few years later. | |
| I was a 21 year old third class Aviation Machinist Mate (an airplane mechanic) with only several months experience with the SU16E (previously UF2G or the AF designation SA16) Grummon Albatross sea plane. We had three aircraft and a hanger near the end of the peninsula that was the US Navy base on the west end of the island. There was a large ramp into the Great Sound which we used as for takeoffs and landings. The SU16E had retractable landing gear, so it could taxi into the sound, retract the gear, and become a flying boat. It could also operate off of a normal runway. The navy was flying P5Ms which were a large flying boat that did not have landing gear. They had to attach wheels to its fuselage in order to bring it ashore. The P5Ms were used primarily for submarine patrols, an important Navy function during the Cold War. | |
| The Vietnam War was beginning to build. There was quite a bit of military traffic flying aircraft in that direction, many of which needed to be refueled over the ocean. The Air Force had large refueling aircraft in Bermuda for that purpose. One morning I was working on the apron and heard a noise. I looked up and saw a smoke trail going directly overhead and into the ocean a couple of miles away. It was an A.F. KB50 (a B50 that had been converted to a mid air refueler). It had taken off from Kindly A.F. Station on the other end of the island, caught fire, and crashed into the ocean. | |
| The SU16E was capable of landing in the open sea under favorable conditions. On landing, the pilot had to calculate the direction and speed of the swells and land at an angle so that the airplane rode the top of a swell until it slowed to a safe speed. On takeoff, it had to perform a similar stunt, but it needed extra power to get airborne quickly. To supplement the power, we used JATO, which were rocket engines that we mounted on either side of the fuselage just ahead of the tail. The JATO bottles were carried in the airplane and were attached on mounts on the rear hatches which swung into the cabin. We practiced this (in the sound, not in the ocean) and it was a bit scary. First you had to mount the bottles (inside the cabin) and attach the detonator wire. You had to be really careful to make sure that the wire was not energized and that any static electricity was grounded and bled off before hooking it up. Then the hatches were swung out and locked shut. The pilot would put on full throttle, get the airplane up on the step (planed out), and then fire the bottles. It was quite a ride. | |
| A seaman on a cargo ship got into a fight and was stabbed several hundred miles east of Bermuda. We were asked to evacuate him to a medical facility. Two airplanes were sent out. I did not get to go. One of the airplanes made a successful landing and was able to get the wounded man on board. On the JATO takeoff, it caught a wave wrong and actually bent a wing enough to wrinkle the aluminum skin and damaged one of the flaps. It got airborne and flew back to Bermuda, but the damage was fairly extensive. We did some preliminary repairs and it was flown to the overhaul facility in Elizabeth City, NC. That was the only open sea rescue with an HU16E that I was aware of during my time in CG aviation. | |
| After I had been in Bermuda for several months, we moved the USCG Air Station from the Navy Base to Kendly AFS (commercial airport) on the east end of the island. Operating in salt water was hard on the airplanes and there were runways at the AFS. By this time I was qualified as a Search and Rescue Air Crewman and flew as crew chief. The crew chief was always an Aviation Machinist Mate, even though other specialist crew members may be higher grades, because we were trained to be responsible for everything on the aircraft. One day I had the ready crew chief duty and was working on my airplane out on the apron. There was a loud explosion. I looked up and saw the smoke trails of two aircraft crashing into the ocean. I immediately cranked the engines and got the aircraft ready to take off. We were soon flying over the wreckage of two AF transport aircraft. They had been practicing nose cone recovery on a Mercury nose cone. Several paramedics were parachuting from the rear cargo platform of one plane and the other was flying close behind photographing the exercise. For some reason, they ran together and both crashed. As I recall there were about ten people killed in the accident. Several of the paramedics had parachuted and were in the water. One had just jumped and his hair had been singed by the explosion. We were searching for people and bodies in the water and directing boats to them. One of the paramedics told of warding of sharks while he was waiting to be rescued. The paramedics were enlisted men and lived on a separate floor in the same quarters that we lived in. I didn't not know any of them well. | |
| Two AF KC135 (Boing 707s converted to midair refuelers) were flying together somewhere several hundred miles southeast of Bermuda. They both disappeared without any known reason or location. We were asked to join the search, along with several AF aircraft and CG aircraft from Miami. It took about three hours to get to the search area. We had bubble windows in the rear of the HU16E, and the crew of four took turns with our heads in the bubble scanning the open ocean. After a few hours of searching, I spotted what appeared to be wreckage floating on the water about a thousand feet below. There was quite a bit of what appeared to be insulation from the aircraft fuselage and we were pretty sure that it was the crash site. Another aircraft found similar wreckage about two hundred miles away from our location. Our guess was that the two KC135s had collided and crashed. One had probably stayed in the air for about an hour longer that the other one. Why there was no distress call? You can only speculate that it had lost its radio. This also made the Bermuda Triangle Books. | |
| It was hurricane season. There was a storm moving between Bermuda and the U.S. East Coast. A large ocean going tug was missing. Our initial intention was to fly to Elizabeth City NC and then to go out the next day behind the storm and search for the tug. The storm moved toward the NC coast and we changed our plans and two aircraft left Bermuda and flew to the air station in New York. We got there late in the afternoon. The storm changed track and the decision makers decided that we would be better off in NC, so, late that evening, we flew to Elizabeth City CG Air Station. Early the next morning, we flew out behind the storm to a search area about three hundred miles east of Cape Hatteras. The visability was poor with scattered low level clouds. We searched for several hours. The only thing that we saw, other than roungh ocean and clouds, was small row boat floating just under the surface. That afternoon we headed back for Elizabeth City. We soon ran into a bank of dark clouds and thunder storms. Evidently this was a feeder band from the hurricane and we had not been notified of the deteriorating weather. Bermuda was closed out also. The pilot went up to ten thousand feet and the clouds still toward above us. We did not carry oxygen, so that was as high as we could fly for any period of time. The pilot then descended to about five hundred feet and we headed for NC under the clouds. If you looked up all you could see were dark clouds. If you looked down, all you could see were breaking waves and foam. The aircraft was being thrown around so badly that it was almost impossible for me to get out of my seat and check on the fuel flow and gages. We flew this way for about two hundred miles. One of the search aircraft was in the same conditions and lost one engine about halfway through. When we flew over the NC outer banks, we could see waves washing into houses. I was never really concerned about our aircraft but I was worried about the one flying on one engine. Both aircraft made it back. | |
| Most of the searches that we flew out of Bermuda were fairly routine. When you fly low over a fishing boat that has lost its engine fifty miles out, you can tell that the crew is very glad to see you. A couple of times we searched for small airplanes that were lost flying to or from Bermuda, but we never found anything. I recall escorting a ship that was on fire until they had it under control. I recall seeing a floundering ship in seas so rough that you could see its keel when it rolled on waves. One day we searched for and found a navy helicopter that had auto-rotated and landed on a narrow point of land. |