CG Rescue 1705

[Cpt._Keyes]

As has been noted in my signature, CG 1705 was on a rescue mission off of SOCAL when it collided with a marine attack chopper formation, without getting into too many details (as they do nothing but infuriate me) It was a massive failure of procedure by both the formation and air traffic control...resulting in the entire C-130 crew and the attack chopper crew getting killed. It was a different airstation than the one I was stationed at, but the aviation community is small in the Coast Guard, with the C-130 community being even smaller, the Flight Engineer and Navigator (John Seidman and Carl Grigonis) I was friends with when they were stationed at Barbers... In fact I had just flown with the engineer on his last South America deployment...and was one of the first people who taught me C-130 systems when I was getting quallified 6 years ago...

I was the operations duty officer at Barbers when I received a rumor of this accident...I had a herc flying at the time, Got on the radio, told them to return to base and pack for a long stay, no questions asked until on deck, and sent them to California...such is the nature of the Coast Guard, the nearest long range search asset to search for a downed aircraft off of California was in Hawaii...12 hours (in a C-130) away (Sacramento immediately grounded all flight operations when they lost 25% of their assets)

So in memory of events 2 years ago.../Salute

http://www.rescue1705.com/