By
Andrew Stackpool
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92WG
flew three missions in the search for a missing fishing
vessel.
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Photo
by FSGT Dan Baynie
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No.
92 Wing searched for three days in fine
and thunderstorm conditions for the Ability,
reported missing in Solomon Islands waters.
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AIR
Force search and rescue support was successfully put to the test
when a No. 92 Wing AP-3C was sortied to the Solomon Islands on
April 24.
The Orion joined the search for the missing 17m fishing vessel
Ability. The vessel and its 12-man crew were reported missing
in waters north-west of Honiara on April 13.
The alarm was raised when five of the crew made it ashore a week
later on April 20 in the vessel’s dinghy.
The Orion was despatched after a request to Defence for assistance
from the Australian Search and Rescue Coordination Centre. It
departed RAAF Base Edinburgh and, after an overnight stop in Townsville,
arrived in the search area on Anzac Day.
The aircraft flew three missions as part of the search coordinated
by the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Honiara.
It found no sign of the trawler and was released on April 27.
It subsequently returned to Edinburgh.
Two days later, Ability activated her Emergency Position Indicating
Radio Beacon and was rescued.
Another crewmember who had abandoned the vessel in a dugout canoe
was also rescued.
Aircraft captain Flight Lieutenant Alex Genz said the crew pre-positioned
overnight in Townsville “in preparation for a full day’s
search the next day, or we would have had to search at night”.
“That would have caused possible problems with our visually
identifying the vessel on the limited information we had about
it, as well as our ability to drop stores or other items had we
found the boat, or survivors in the water,” FLTLT Genz said.
The aircraft flew nine hours on the first two days, which extended
the search into the evening, and 6½ hours on the third
day. Search conditions varied from fine weather to thunderstorms
and heavy squalls.
“On the second night we were searching at 1000 feet with
lightning everywhere, which made it interesting,” he said.
“The third day was about as good as it gets. We searched
from 1000 feet down to 300 [feet]. The first day was clear of
contacts, but we saw a lot of flotsam, tree trunks, containers
washed off ships, etc. Then on the last day we stumbled across
a fishing fleet near the equator.”
The Orion joined a French Guardian aircraft from Noumea in the
search. It had been on task days before the Orion arrived but
returned to Noumea and did not come back until the final day of
the Australian aircraft’s involvement in the search.
“They were very professional,” FLTLT Genz said. “The
search coordination generally went well, but we had only scanty
information on what the Ability looked like until we were able
to speak to people in Honiara. That made things a bit harder on
the first day but after that we changed our tracks slightly and
increased our search area.”
Despite not finding the Ability, FLTLT Genz was pleased with the
deployment.
“From our crew’s perspective, we were all keen to maximise
our search effort. Everyone pitched in to find those guys. I am
quite confident had they been where we were tasked, we’d
have found them,” he said.
“He was found outside our assigned search areas. However,
had he set off his beacon during the three days that we were searching,
more than likely we would have located the vessel during our mid/high-level
transits to on-task and going off task.”
