ADF Help in Rescue of Stranded Mariners

[tomahawk6]

This was a team effort between the USAF,Coast Guard and the ADF helping to rescue 3 stranded  civvie mariners.

https://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/missing-mariners-rescued-after-air-force-crew-spots-sos-on-pacific-island-1.639945

\An Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker was near the end of its pattern, looking for a missing white and blue skiff and its crew in the western Pacific, when it turned to avoid rough weather and spotted a tiny island.

“That’s when we saw ‘SOS’ and a boat right next to it on the beach,” Lt. Col. Jason Palmeira-Yen, the cargo plane’s pilot with the Hawaii Air National Guard, said in an Air Force statement.

The plane was dispatched Sunday from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam with a crew of Hawaii and Pennsylvania Air National Guard members to search for three mariners who set out on what should have been about a 25-mile journey from one Micronesian atoll to another, but never arrived at their destination.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

They were on a 3 hour tour?  ;D

Laughing aside we found a skiff that we had been looking for, the Buff had flown a full grid, but the skiff was just outside of it, the crew was sitting there watching the plane look for them, but no way to signal. That was on a clam flat sunny day. people overestimate the ability to spot something on the water.

 

[daftandbarmy]

They were on a 3 hour tour?  ;D

Laughing aside we found a skiff that we had been looking for, the Buff had flown a full grid, but the skiff was just outside of it, the crew was sitting there watching the plane look for them, but no way to signal. That was on a clam flat sunny day. people overestimate the ability to spot something on the water.

That's why, when I go kayaking, I carry a SPOT (waterproofed and secured in my PFD of course), cellphone, extra power and batteries, fire making equipment, extra lighters, a marine band radio, flares (road and rocket style), two whistles, a big yellow tarp etc etc.....

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Spot is great, simple and easy to use.