Reached A Woman on Fog-Covered Cruise Ship

The California Air National Guard's 129th Rescue Wing on a high-risk night mission in fog rescued an unresponsive 79-year-old woman from the Ruby Princess cruise ship 100 miles off the California coast, according to the Air National Guard.

"The mission was approved as a 'high-risk' mission going out the door, which is pretty rare for us," said Air Force Lt. Col. Ben Copley, a helicopter pilot with the 129th Rescue Wing. "This person was probably going to die today if they didn't get picked up."

The helicopter crew flew using night-vision goggles, navigating the HH-60W through heavy winds to get to the ship in the early hours of Dec. 17.

"We trained to find the boat. We trained to shoot an approach, to hold a stable hover, to hoist the PJs off the boat. We trained to do it all on night-vision goggles," Copley said. "We don't train to do it inside a fog bank."

Once they reached the ship, the pararescue crew spent about an hour performing initial treatment on the woman and preparing her for the flight home, which included a hoist off the deck up to the hovering helicopter. The crew then flew to San Jose to take her to a hospital.

Copley, an HH-60 helicopter pilot, credited the wing's thorough and persistent training as a key factor to the mission's success during limited visibility and degrading weather conditions over the ocean. "There's a reason we fly 1,200 hours a year in this helicopter to train," Copley said. "It all prepares us. We couldn't do that unless we did all the little building blocks first."

FMI: www.ang.af.mil/