Air Sea Recue - postscript

Saturday morning saw the departure from Shannon of the two Pave Hawk HH60G helicopters involved in Wednesday's air sea rescue. The pair 88-26109 and 89-26205 departed under the 'Jolly 11' call sign, flying VFR back to their base at Lakenheath in the UK.

The drama had begun on Wednesday evening last when the two helicopters were dispatched from their base to collect an injured crewman on a Panamanian registered cargo ship, 200 miles off the southwest coast and outside range of the Coastguard Sikorskys.

In all, 4 aircraft from the USAF were involved - 88-26109 (Rescue 109), 89-2605 (Rescue 212), Lockheed MC-130P 69-5828 (Rescue 5828) based at Mildenhall along with KC135 63-8025 using the "Quid" radio callsign. The RAF also supplied a Nimrod from Kinloss.

The helicopters were initially expected to land at Cork but the weather intervened with the airfield going out of limits shortly after lunch. It was then expected that the helicopters would recover to Shannon following their rendezvous with the ship.

The Nimrod returned to Kinloss around 20.00 after the crewman was winched aboard. The Pave Hawk choppers then headed for Shannon where light mist was starting to form from 19.00 onwards. The Hercules made it to Shannon first, loitering in the DERAG hold until both helicopters landed safely on the R06 end at approximately 22.20.

Rescue 5828 landed at 22.30 to drop off maintenance personnel for the helicopters before departing again for Mildenhall.

CAT 2 was in operation at Shannon for most of Thursday with a cloud base that never got much above 300ft. At times the control tower was clearly visible with the basket hidden in cloud ! The helicopters were scheduled to return to their base at Lakenheath at 16.30 and 16.40 as Jolly 12 and Jolly 13.

Jolly 12 ground taxied to the threshold of Runway 24 and made a CAT 2 departure pretty much on schedule, disappearing into the cloud almost immediately. Jolly 13 held at the entrance to the Delta 1 taxiway with a follow me vehicle while a departing Ryanair taxied to the CAT 2 holding point of R24. A landing Ryanair then reported a bird strike which took some minutes to clear in the gloom, no doubt compounded by the low visibility conditions. At this stage Jolly 12 had climbed to his IFR cruise of FL 70 and was reporting problems with his icing equipment which eventually forced the crew to decide that a return to Shannon was the best option. Both helicopters positioned to their parking position on Taxiway 11 to allow rectification of the icing problem.

On Saturday morning, December 13, both departed Shannon, just after 09.00.