Daisy Chain Rescue
27 JANUARY-3 FEBRUARY 1943
DAISY CHAIN RESCUE
In 1941, months before Pearl Harbor, American freighters crossing the North Atlantic were being torpedoed by German U-boats as Hitler tried to starve England into submission. By May, President Franklin Roosevelt declared an “Unlimited National Emergency” and detailed US Navy escorts for these convoys. In addition, Patrol Wing 7 was hastily established and sent to Reykjavik, Iceland. On 6 August 1941, the PBY Catalinas of PatWing 7, squadrons VP-73 and VP-74, became operational.
Seventeen months later, on 27 January 1943, one of PatWing 7’s PBYs operating out of Narsarssuak, Greenland, was en route to Ivigut to begin sweeping ahead of convoys. She would report weather and ice conditions, and more importantly, German U-boat activity. But thick fog set in as the plane droned on, and the pilot had increasing difficulty distinguishing the water’s surface. Neither could the PBY climb over the soup. Reluctantly the plane turned back. Her pilot eased lower and lower in the deteriorating visibility, hoping to gauge the water’s surface until–with a sudden lurch–the flying boat’s belly scraped against ice and ground to a halt!
A radio call to Narsarssuak brought an Army plane to drop food, clothing, and spare parts, and for several days the Navy crew worked to repair their Catalina. But the longer the heavy aircraft sat, the more deeply it sank into the newly forming crust. Before too many days it became evident the plane was not going to be easily dislodged. Now the most pressing concern became extracting the crew from Greenland’s frozen and forbidding wastes.
A rescue party of eight Army soldiers and a local cryolite mining operator who knew the area, Mr. Sinclair Adams, embarked on the seaplane tender USS SANDPIPER (AVP-9). By the last of January, the tender had reached Arsuk Fjord, the nearest point to effect a landing of the rescue party. Here the singular small beach was walled from the island’s plateau by cliffs. After unloading the equipment, which included two motorized toboggans and a mobile base camp, it became apparent the cliff would present a considerable problem. They grunted and strained in an attempt to lift their equipment to prominent ledges, but without much success. Observing their plight, SANDPIPER’s skipper, LT H.T.E. Anderson, hatched an inventive idea. Thirty sailors were sent ashore to scramble up the nearly vertical face and form a human chain. One at time the party’s bundles were hoisted up, hand over hand, until all were safely atop the precipice. The rescue party then set to their task. The remainder of the evolution went well, and the party returned with the Navy fliers on the 3rd of February.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 6 FEB 25
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Department of the Navy, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air Warfare). United States Naval Aviation 1910-1980. Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, p. 109.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol 1 The Battle of the Atlantic. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1947, pp. 77, 334.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: A successful rescue was not accomplished in every case of a downed aircraft in Greenland. In fact, air operations in Greenland were complicated by clandestine German radio outposts who often broadcast sham distress calls, luring American fliers deep into the frozen Arctic. From whence they often never returned.
SANDPIPER had barely completed this mission when a second rescue tasking was received. On the early morning of the 3rd, the Army transport USAT DORCHESTER was torpedoed in the Davis Strait, and the seaplane tender was asked to assist in searching for survivors. By the time she arrived at the scene however, the 34o water and 36o air had left only bodies buoyed by their lifebelts.
