While unaccustomed to serving in the role, a B-52 Stratofortress bomber and its crew recently participated in a search and rescue mission off the southern coast of Guam.

The crew, from the 20th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, was called to help the Coast Guard find a vessel that was missing at sea with six people on board, according to the Defense Department.

On June 25, Capt. Sean Simpson, the aircraft commander, and his crew were flying over Guam when they received a call from the Coast Guard Sector Rescue Coordination Center. They needed help finding a Pacific Island-style canoe that had been missing since June 19, according to DoD.

The sailors, who had minimal provisions, were supposed to make a one-day journey. Their families contacted the Coast Guard for help after they disappeared for six days.

The B-52 crew knew their mission wouldn’t be easy — they didn’t even know what a Pacific Island-style canoe looked like.

“We’d never heard of this kind of vessel before,” Simpson said, according to DoD. “We knew this was going to be a challenge.”

But the crew got a little help from a Disney princess.

“We asked for more details about the vessel,” Simpson said, “and the dispatcher told us, ‘It’s just like the boat from ‘Moana.’”

The crew spent more than three hours scouring the Pacific Ocean for the tiny canoe. Around 2:45 p.m., they finally spotted the small canoe and its six passengers.

The bomber was nearly 19,000 feet in the sky, 1st Lt. Jordan Allen said, making it a small miracle that the crew was able to spot the missing vessel.

The B-52 crew quickly relayed the canoe’s coordinates to the Coast Guard, which in turn contacted a nearby civilian ship to help, according to DoD.

Lt. Col. Jarred Prier, the squadron’s director of operations, believes the mission’s success was a result of the effective training that the crew received.

“Search and rescue isn’t something people typically think of when they talk about the B-52, but our training and adaptability really paid off,” he said. “Being a part of this successful search and rescue operation speaks to the diversity of our skill set and shows our importance here in the Pacific.”

Noah Nash is a rising senior at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. At school, he is the editor in chief of the Collegian Magazine and the digital director of the Collegian, Kenyon's newspaper.

Share:
In Other News
Load More