Lifeboat crew recall RAF jets’ crash mission
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WICK Lifeboat crew members yesterday recalled their fateful mission to join the search for four airmen who crashed into the Moray Firth, off the east Caithness coast.
The Royal Air Force yesterday confirmed three of the four Lossiemouth servicemen in Tuesday’s accident involving two Tornado GR4s were dead.
Of the two who were rescued, one died of his injuries in hospital. The two servicemen in the other plane remain unaccounted for.
The Wick rescue craft, Roy Barker II, was the first lifeboat on the scene at the Beatrice oil field, 25 kilometres east of the town at 3 pm.
It acted as the command vessel and co-ordinated the operation involving five other vessels, which included lifeboat crews from Buckie and Invergordon.
The six crew on the Roy Barker conducted a four hour search until they were told to stand down at 7 pm on Tuesday.
When the vessel returned to its home port an hour later, it was refuelled ready to go.
The crew were put on standby the following morning to continue the search on instructions from the RAF and Aberdeen Coastguard.
They were told there was a 50/50 chance they would be asked to go out again but that proved not to be the case.
Wick Lifeboat station’s operations manager Bruce Tait (67) heard two jets flying over his home in Thrumster and then received a call 10 minutes later from the coastguard service.
He said that any call-out which involves a loss of life is a tragedy but that he had never experienced any thing of this scale.
“The message that I got from the coastguards were that there were four fighter aircraft which had left Lossiemouth, two were accounted for, two were unaccounted for.
“They thought that the two unaccounted aircraft had ditched into the sea although we did not know that at the time.
“As soon as we received the message the crew were gathered and the lifeboat was launched within eight minutes and left at 1.50 pm.
“After the lifeboat had left the station, I lost all contact and they co-ordinated with the coastguard during the search mission.”
Added Mr Tait: “Coxswain Iain Cormack directed the operation during the search where he relayed messages from the Coastguard.
“It was obvious that the way the military were speaking, that we were dealing with fatalities.
“But our staff are fully trained to deal with these situations and when a call like this comes, we usually end up with more people than we need.”
Deputy second coxswain Gordie Morrison (41) was on leave from working offshore on a survey vessel when he received the call from his home.
He said that being told to stand down from the search mission and return back to port was the uneasiest he has ever felt.
“The sea conditions weren’t too bad but the visibility was very poor, “ he said.
“But when we arrived on the scene, the fog started to lift and we had a decent period of visibility for about 90 minutes.
“I have been involved in the lifeboat for ten years but this would be one of the worst call-outs that any of us had been on.
“It was quite an eerie feeling coming home when we were told that we were being stood down and you know that there were two guys still missing, it was a horrible moment for all of us.”
The crew recovered pieces of debris of the jets which they passed on to the Buckie lifeboat.
Both Mr Tait and Mr Morrison, on behalf of the lifeboat crew, expressed their sympathies to the families of the airmen who were killed.
Flt Lt Hywel Poole, 28, from Bangor, died in hospital after being airlifted from the scene.
Sqd Ldr Samuel Bailey, 35, from Nottingham, and Flt Lt Adam Sanders, 27, who grew up in Lancashire, are also presumed dead.
RAF Lossiemouth Group Captain Ian Gale said that the second person who was rescued but not yet named remains under medical care, where he is in a serious but stable condition.
