In the realm of law enforcement, those that pin on their badges and strap on their weapons have a special bond with one another. This is due to a number of factors, one of which is the element of danger that comes with the job.
Law enforcement officers take great pride in the fact that they have the courage to stand in the face of extreme danger in order to protect their fellow men and women. Each revels in being one of the few men and women who can live on the edge of death’s doorstep.
For Customs personnel, that edge could be the next car across the border — maybe the person driving has just done something very bad, and he’s sitting on a loaded gun, just waiting for the inspector to interfere with his flight to freedom.
For the agent, it could be the unknown on the other side of a drug smuggler’s door that’s about to come off its hinges, courtesy of a court order.
But do any of us really know what it means to live on the edge?
It’s difficult to argue that one in our midst has truly snuck a peek through death’s door and lived to tell about it. Not only that, he looks on the activity that took him there as being one of his hobbies — conducting rescues at sea.
His name is Chris Baur, and he’s one of our Customs Pilots assigned to the New York Aviation Unit.
Chris’s life-saving adventures are certainly not your run-of-the-mill rescues — not that any rescues are. It’s just that when you compare the rescue that Chris and his friends recently performed, to the rescue of, say, a beach lifeguard saving a potential drowning victim, the lifeguard’s job looks like a cakewalk.
You see, as well as being a Customs Pilot, Chris is a Captain in the New York Air National Guard and flies Sikorsky Pave Hawk helicopters for the Westhampton-based 106th Air Rescue Group whose specialty is mid-ocean rescues.
The mainstay of the 106th is the HC-130P, a special version of the 4-engine, Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft. This big airplane is equipped to provide aerial refueling; it has life rafts stripped to its wings, room for twenty people, and it is capable of delivering rescue kits and outboard motor-equipped inflatable boats to survivors.
After dropping the gear to any survivors found at sea, para-rescuemen medics who are highly trained in survival techniques, parachute into the water from the HC-130Ps to keep the survivors alive until they can be picked up. Here’s where Chris Baur and his Pave Hawk helicopter come into play.
The HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter is almost identical to the UH-60 Black Hawk used by Customs. Weighing as much as 23,000 pounds when fully loaded and burning about 1200 pounds of jet fuel an hour while in a hover, the 3,000 horsepower Pave Hawk gets thirsty frequently.
Consequently, when you are hovering about in the middle of the ocean, trying to locate that legendary needle in the haystack, your gas station has to come along with you.
The Pave Hawk is equipped with an aerial refueling probe that allows it to replenish from the HC-130P.
Since the 1970s when the group first performed rescues, the 106th has been credited with saving 263 lives in missions around the world.
But on December 9, 1994, the group was called upon to perform what was believed by many to be an impossible assignment.
A 450-foot Ukranian freighter, the Salvador Allende, manned by a crew of 31, had sunk after breaking apart 900 miles southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the heavy seas of the North Atlantic.
Team elements of the 106th began heading north from New York. One of the HC-130Ps was able to get on station early and locate some survivors in life boats.
Brutal, 30-foot seas and gale force winds tossed the tiny life boats about ruthlessly, but without the helicopters, there was nothing the national guardsmen could do for the men.
As sunset closed on this pitiful scene, the HC-130P had no choice but to leave the crewmen of the Allende and begin the long trip back to landfall to plan for the next day.
The crew of the HC-130P would be struggling with their thoughts of those men trying to survive through the night.
All of the members of the 106th eventually assembled in a Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, hotel room that evening to begin planning their strategy for the next day. For Chris Baur and his fellow pilots, the thought of flying a helicopter over 900 miles, one way, into the middle of the ocean, just to get to the search area, was a feat to consider.
A lot of “what-ifs” to think about. What if there’s a catastrophic failure in all of that complicated machinery whirling about over your head and you have to land? That’s a lot of metal slinging around for such a long time without any relief. Will it hold up?
Landing in the ocean is called ditching. Ditching a Pave Hawk in these conditions would be certain death for the crew. What if one of the crew, more particularly, one of the two pilots, became too ill to function? The Pave Hawk can be flown by one pilot, but could that single pilot endure for the length of time that would be needed without any relief? There’s no getting up out of your seat to relieve yourself or to stretch your legs, even if both pilots are fully able to fly.
The Pave Hawk just wasn’t designed to allow for that. The tremendous amount of vibration and noise that one undergoes as part of being a crewmember on a Pave Hawk can significantly wear on a person, even after only two or three hours.
It was going to take them as many as six to seven hours just to get to where they needed to be. One can go on and on describing the variety of problems that could easily lead to disaster for Chris Baur and his crewmates.
The next day, the rescuers of the 106th found out that a merchant ship had pulled one surviving Allende crewman out of the water, but he was found 70 miles from the area where the other survivors had been spotted the day before.
Chris Baur’s Pave Hawk, codenamed Jolly 14, and another Pave Hawk from the 106th had launched before dawn in a snowstorm. The HC-130P would be leaving soon to refuel the helicopters and to begin searching for survivors once it was at the scene where the Allende went down.
Canadian military aircraft had joined the now, 600-square mile ocean search, which was being coordinated by the U.S. Coast Guard.
The weather conditions were unbelievably dangerous. Extremely turbulent 60 MPH winds, poor visibility, icing conditions, and 30 foot ocean swells constantly threatened to bring the helicopters out of the sky.
At the same time that Chris and his fellow pilot were trying to keep their helicopter from ingesting sea water into its engines, and were trying to maintain situational awareness in an environment with no reference points, they also had to coordinate and perform the many aerial refuelings that were necessary through the course of the mission.
The aerial refueling of a Pave Hawk is a dangerous set of procedures — even in optimal weather conditions.
The HC-130’s delivers fuel to the Pave Hawk through a long hose with a device attached to its end known as a basket, and this line trails straight back from the aircraft’s wing.
The Pave Hawk must fly up from behind the HC-130P and couple its refueling probe with the basket. This connection takes place only a few feet in front of the Pave Hawks whirling main rotor blades.
By noon, the helicopters had been in the air seven hours and had refueled six times from U.S. Marine Reserve and Air Force aircraft.
They had been on station in the search area a short time and had located three bodies thus far.
They were about to refuel once again when the flight engineer on Jolly 14 saw a lone seaman in a life preserver, waving his arms aimlessly.
The body of a fellow crewman could be seen floating nearby. The surviving crewman, his eyes irritated and virtually swollen shut from 36 hours of exposure to sea water and fuel oil, could hear, but not see the Pave Hawk.
A para-rescueman from Jolly 14 dropped into the water, attached a harness to the survivor, and the two of them were hoisted aboard.
They continued their search for a short time, but after eight hours in the air, it was time to make the six hour return trip in order to accomplish the final aerial refueling before darkness.
All of the crew members were suffering from extreme fatigue and dehydration was beginning to become a concern. After their ninth aerial refueling, they were still about 37; miles from landfall, had run into a storm and lost their fuel reserves due to strong headwinds.
One last aerial refueling would be necessary, and it would have to be done in darkness. The HC-130P extinguished all of its lights to avoid over-illuminating the Pave Hawk pilots’ sensitive night-vision goggles, and the aircraft proceeded with their aerial refueling procedures.
Despite almost 15 straight hours in flying conditions that most pilots would normally avoid at all costs, Chris Baur and his teammates from the 106th Air Rescue Group completed the herculean task they had been given.
They had set a record for endurance and distance with this rescue. It was their training, physical conditioning, team work, and their truly heroic efforts that enabled them to recover the one survivor, notwithstanding the Ukranian seaman’s ability to stay alive for almost two days in the middle of the North Atlantic with nothing more than a life preserver.
Nonetheless, the group was extremely disheartened that they had not been able to save the other crew members who were alive the previous day.
The 106th’s heroic efforts had not gone unnoticed. There was a media frenzy awaiting them when they returned.
The dramatic rescue made international news instantly, from the front page of the New York Times, to television, radio, and newspapers around the globe. They even got invitations to appear on television shows such as “Regis and Kathie Lee” and NBC’s “Today Show.”
The crew was recognized by their military superiors as well. Captain Christian Baur of the New York Air National Guard was honored in March with the Distinguished Flying Cross for military aviators for heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight.
In his regular job as a Customs pilot, Chris gives just as much effort, and has even been known to pull off a rescue using a Customs Piper Navajo.
For that effort, which involved the rescue of three fishermen off the coast of Cape Cod Bay, Chris and fellow Customs Pilot Mike Brenner will receive the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association’s Medal of Valor.
All photos courtesy of Chris Baur.