Safety gear paid off in pilot's 2nd rescue at sea

By Peter Boylan
Advertiser Staff Writer

Australian pilot Raymond Clamback got lucky once. This time he was prepared.

Clamback was plucked from the Pacific Ocean yesterday after he was forced to ditch his airplane Monday for the second time in five years. He might not have made it out safely if he hadn't stocked up on emergency gear.

A U.S. Coast Guard C-130 crew located Clamback as daylight faded Monday. The plane's commander said the gear probably saved Clamback's life.

"The probability of finding a single person in the middle of the ocean is almost zero," said Commander Bill Adickes. "It's entering the near-miracle category."

Adickes said Clamback had everything he needed to survive a crash, including the three most important items to ensure rescue: radar-reflective strips on his life vest, a strobe light and a signal mirror.

"If you have those three things, we will find you," Adickes said.

He said the C-130's radar is designed to pinpoint a periscope on a submarine, and Clamback was equipped with survival gear and devices visible on the radar.

"When I ditched, it wasn't the best ditching I'd done, and the airplane turned upside(down) and I had difficulty getting out of it," Clamback told Nine Network television by telephone from the cargo ship that eventually pulled him from the ocean.

He had managed to salvage a life jacket before the plane sank, but could not retrieve the life raft in time.

"So I swam around there for six or seven hours, and the Coast Guard came out and finally found me and dropped a life raft to me, and I finally got into it," Clamback said.

He had ditched his Cessna 182 at around 11:30 a.m. Monday about 700 miles south of Honolulu. A second Cessna pilot flying alongside as they ferried the planes from Hilo to American Samoa stayed in the area, circling the debris until the Coast Guard plane arrived.

At 6:39 p.m., Kevin Cartier, a member of Adickes' C-130 crew, spotted Clamback on the plane's radar. The crew flew lower and saw the pilot, in an orange vest equipped with a strobe light, waving at them, Cartier said.

"I've only found two people lost at sea by themselves in 20 years of aviation," Cartier said. "He is very lucky. Somebody is looking out for him."

Cartier said the C-130 crew dropped a raft filled with food rations and survival equipment, then lighted the area with flares and signal smoke. Two other C-130s circled Clamback's position throughout the night as he bobbed in the ocean before being picked up at 3 a.m. yesterday by the P&O Nedlloyd Los Angeles, a cargo container ship the Coast Guard had sent to find him.

The captain of the ship said Clamback was not injured and could continue with the ship to Melbourne, Australia.

Clamback, 67, a pilot with more than 20,000 hours of flight experience who ferries aircraft for a living, said he might give up trans-Pacific flights after ditching for a second time. He and co-pilot Shane Wiley had ditched an airplane on a 1999 flight from Florida to Hilo.

"I'm thinking about it. I've been doing it for 30-odd years and it's probably time I gave it away anyhow," he said. "I'm now 67 years old, and I certainly was weak when I got on board this vessel here. I could hardly stand up."

He said the engine had begun to falter about 30 minutes before stopping.

"You know that once you do a ditching out in the middle of the Pacific, everything's got to go right from then on," he said.

"The great thing about it," he added, "is we were in U.S. airspace and U.S. waters, and of course the Coast Guard is very active around the Hawaiian Islands, and once they came out, I knew I had a pretty good chance."

In November 1999, Clamback and Wiley were ferrying a new Piper Cherokee from Florida to Hilo when the engine malfunctioned and they had to ditch the plane about 305 miles northeast of Hawai'i.

The men floated in life vests for 10 hours, eventually spotting the green light of a grain freighter bound for Korea. They swam toward the freighter and were pulled to safety.

Just before Clamback was found yesterday, someone at the Coast Guard office in Honolulu remembered his name from a thank-you plaque hanging in a hallway of the Coast Guard office.

Lucky for Clamback, there's space for another one.

The Associated Press and Advertiser Staff Writer Mike Gordon contributed to this report. Reach Peter Boylan at 535-8110 or pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.