Have been reading about some of the SAR sorties flown by the Nimrod and crews in Tony Blackman's 'Nimrod - Rise and Fall'.
The description of the Piper Alpha Rescue co-ordination mission written by Nimrod Radio Operator Joe Kennedy is really disturbing and made all the more poignant in that there was nothing the Nimrod crew could directly do to help save the crew of the stricken rig.
The groundcrew chief plugged his headset in and quietly asked if we knew what the SAR shout was for; someone said it was a fire on a North Sea oil rig...
... I had no idea where Piper Alpha was in the vastness of the North Sea and where it fitted in with all the other oil fields and therefore broke into the busy intercom to request an electronic pointer from the tac nav so that I could concentrate my surface search in the required area. What nobody expected next was the P1 (Major Gary Barth, Canadian exchange officer) calmly advising the crew that he could see a large orange glow on track beyond the horizon. Our Nimrod was still over 80nm from the platform, and simultaneously the realisation struck everyone that this had developed well beyond a small deck fire. The atmosphere in Rescue 01 suddenly chilled as the implications of the new information became clear. This was going to be a very major incident.
What an appalling accident... Kennedy's stark description of the radio calls and the horror and initial confusion in conjunction with the bravery of the rescuers in helicopters and boats below is certainly one of the most affecting descriptions of this accident I have read.
On the other hand the most improbable mission was the one flown 1000 miles off the coast of Chile by a crew who were displaying at a Chilean airshow, to drop supplies to a British all female crew, in a yacht that had been dis-masted, commanded by Tracy Edwards.
“We had a pleasant surprise when we landed and walked into the air show operations as the Chilean air force Wg Cdr in charge had been a student at RAF Staff College Bracknell when I had been on the directing staff. He spoke excellent English and was to prove to be a great help in overcoming difficulties. We made contact with the UK and discovered that Tracy and the yacht were no longer in danger, had carried out repairs and were making about 3 knots under a small jury rigged mast. There was thus no necessity for an urgent rescue operation but they would need to receive charts and some other bits if they were to make it safely to Chile."
The crew flew out and dropped maps, tools and whisky to the crew who made it safely to Chile...
- View from the desk of the jury rigged yacht.JPG (42.84 KiB) Viewed 705 times
I thoroughly recommend Tony Blackman's book...
Life may not be the party you hoped for, but while you're here, you may as well dance. 