Tuesday, September 1, 2009

ADAK The Rescue of Alfa Foxtrot 586

By Andrew C. A. Jampoler
ISBN 1591144124 Hard cover 240 pages, 11 photos & 5 drawings
Published on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Alfa Foxtrot 586’s fatal mission as a tribute to those lost, the account was written by a naval aviator who has flown the same aircraft on the same mission from the same air base. The aircraft is a P-3 Orion on station during a sensitive mission off the Kamchatka Peninsula in the north Pacific. The time is mid-day on 26 October 1978. Andy Jampoler takes readers into the cockpit of the turboprop as a propeller malfunction turns into an engine fire, eventually forcing aircraft commander Jerry Grigsby to ditch his patrol plane into the empty, mountainous seas west of the Aleutian Islands. His fourteen crewmembers, strapped in their seats, expect the worst—and get it. The aircraft goes down in just ninety seconds, taking one of the three rafts with it. A second raft, terribly overcrowded, soon begins to leak.The flight crew’s desperate battle to survive is told with the authority, drama, and sensitivity that only someone with the author’s background could provide. He draws on interviews with survivors, searchers, and even the master of the Soviet fishing trawler that saved the living and recovered the bodies of the dead. He also draws on recordings of radio communications, messages in the files of the state and defense departments, and the patrol squadron’s own investigation of the ditching.The work of the patrol squadrons was mostly shrouded in secrecy during the Cold War. Hopefully more news of these operations will gradually come to light and this book is an excellent offering.
Author Jampoler is a retired naval aviator and former commanding officer of Patrol Squadron 19 and of Naval Air Station Moffett Field. Only someone who was there could've accurately imparted the feeling of being inside a P-3 operating over desolate stretches of the North Pacific.
The writing style is unique. During the course of the text, passages from the report of the official inquiry into the ditching are inserted to put the narrative time frame into context.
One minor quibble with the book is on page 136 where the author misidentifies the water survival training school at Comox BC as "arctic survival techniques on land." In fact the school at Comox is for training crews in sea survival and employs both a large tower, unofficially known as "Terror Tower" and having students towed through the water behind a 75 foot yard craft wearing simulated parachute gear.
The subsequent rescue of the aircraft survivors and their transport to the USSR at the height of the Cold War made for fascinating reading. 
What was the saddest point of the book was the treatment of the survivors and their families after the tragedy. The survivors had their pay reduced to offset their time not on deployment; which is surely one of the saddest examples ever of an unfeeling bureaucracy. 
This book is highly recommended for anyone interested in naval aviation and Cold War history. (DS)  

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