USCGC Pontchartrain, doing duty at Ocean Station November, rescued the passengers and crew of Pan Am flight 6.
The ocean stations (which were multinational) were established in 1940 to provide weather information, with a secondary mission of search and rescue. The greater reliability of jets, along with weather satellites and reporting buoys, lessened the need for manned reporting stations in the middle of the seas. Most of the weather stations were abandoned by 1970. The Coast Guard ended its participation in 1976. Norway kept one Atlantic station (Mike) in intermittent service until the end of the century.
The Pontchartrain would serve in the Coast Guard until 1972. She was scrapped the following year.
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3 comments:
Miss Fit:
LIFE Magazine article on Capt. Ogg's ditching HERE:
https://books.google.com/books?id=s0EEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA22&dq=Ordeal+on+Flight+943&hl=en&ei=e6lpTJ7LKoWKlwfko-ieBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result#v=onepage&q=Ordeal%20on%20Flight%20943&f=false
FVH
31 people aboard...24 passengers,7 crew. I can only wonder at how well this would owrk in open ocean with a modern jet liner and over 100 people. Scully pulled it off on the Hudson, but there was plenty of help and relatively flat water.
Good account here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_6
Fascinating video, but the obvious loss of the tail made me read some more about the incident. The previous year another 377 ditched and had its tail tear loose and they lost 4 people (not clear if that was the cause). In this case, the Captain directed the Purser to clear the rear of the plane.
Pulling up the seating diagram for the 377, it shows that 32 passenger seats were located forward of the main entrance door, just aft of the wing, which appears to be about the point the tail ripped off. Very lucky on the landing, except for the swell hitting a wing and causing the rotation, excellent work by the Coasties.
The best ocean ditching example is the DC-9 off St. Croix, in 1970. 22 of 57 passengers died, along with 1 of 6 crew. The flight crew was prepared for ditching, but no one told the cabin, and several people were unbelted. Not a good sample, really.
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