First SAR Mission for White Pine Composite Squadron

On Sunday, 23 February 2003 a Cessna 172 crashed in the mountains somewhere between Ely, and Lund, NV. The AFRCC at Langley AFB received the first "hit" sometime that afternoon...

Ely, NV -- When Nevada Wing got the word, they notified several of the squadrons. Winnemucca & Elko were notified early Monday afternoon (24th) but they were snowed in. It was fairly clear in Ely on Monday but White Pine Composite Squadron is not a flying squadron therefore the good weather could not be taken advantage of. The sheriff was notified and sent out a ground team.

It snowed in Ely on Monday night and there was 4-5 inches, at least, on the ground Tuesday morning. The sky remained overcast all day on Tuesday with snow showers several times during the day.

On Tuesday (25th) Elko got their 2nd notice as it looked like the weather was clearing up. The mission IC, the Winnemucca Squadron commander, called on Tuesday afternoon and asked if White Pine Composite Squadron could host a SAR Mission on Wednesday.

Ely airport was the closest airport to the crash site so the search planes could launch from there. Four of the senior members of White Pine met at the meeting building at 3:00 pm on Tuesday afternoon and set up for the next day.

Wednesday morning (26th), around 7:00 am, four of the White Pine senior members and five or six of the Cadets arrived at the Mission Base to wait for the planes that were due in shortly after 8:30 am. They used the time to set up a breakfast for the pilots when they arrived. All the pilots, including planes and crews from Minden and Yerington, had arrived by or before 9:30. The squadron PAO was the cook and she served breakfast to the pilots and the crew.

There were five squadrons in all taking part. Seven planes had flown in but only five took to the air for the search. The clouds were hanging low over the mountains so the crews could not take off right away. They waited until the ground team, that was a couple of miles from the actual crash site, called in to tell them that the sky had cleared up and they could take to the air.

The mission base was manned by the White Pine Composite Squadron members and members of the Elko and Winnemucca squadrons. Elko members, with the help of at least one of the cadets, took care of operations. The rest of the cadets operated the radio equipment and helped by communicating with the pilots, taking notes, running messages to Ops and running other errands as needed. Two of the senior members were scanners on two of the planes and one of them took the pictures. Our Incident Commander was there all day and did a great job of coordinating the mission.

Finally the weather cleared and the crews were briefed and received their grid assignments. They were chauffeured to the ramp, by the squadron PAO, who is the regular Van driver and was driving back and forth picking up and delivering pilots to their planes all day (in between cooking for them). The pilots then took off in search of the downed plane. The first plane to take off was SkyBird at 11:19 am. The White Pine Deputy Commander for Cadets was in SkyBird armed with the camera and acting as a scanner. The White Pine Safety Officer went in one of the other planes as a scanner.

The other aircraft took off closely behind SkyBird. At 12:20 pm, according to the clock on the wall, one of the Winnemucca planes called in to report they had picked up the ELT. That was one hour and one min (according to the wall clock) after the first plane took off. The "find" plane had taken off only 20 min before picking up the ELT and only 10 min after entering their grid. They traced the signal to the wrecked plane.

The ground team was guided to the crash site but they found only one body, the pilot. It was apparent that the passenger had gotten out of the plane as someone had tied the dog they had with them to one of the struts, but the passenger was no where to be found. There was some blood in the snow as further proof of a missing and wounded passenger. Sometime after they arrived at the crash site a helicopter, hovering over the site, blew enough snow away with it's blades to uncover the passenger's body. The sheriff called the mission complete sometime just before 5:00 pm and our pilots packed up and went home. Mission accomplished.

After the downed plane was found at least 3 of the planes returned almost right away. While waiting for word on the mission as to whether or not it would be called completed or continued to the next day, everyone helped themselves to the lunch as the PAO provided a meal for each donated by one of the squadron's new senior members.

Footnotes
1. The dog, reported to be a pit bull, survived and is alive and well, living with a family in McGill, NV. Apparently the families of the crash victims didn't want it back.
2. The crash location is reported to be near Lund in the direction of Ely, approximately 35 miles south of Ely.
3. This was not only the first ever SAR for the White Pine Composite Squadron since it was re-organized in July 1999, it was also the first SAR conducted in this area in approximately two decades.