SAAF Bucc 417 ditched in the South Atlantic on delivery flight, 30 October 1965 about 1000 km south of Canaries.
Searching for Captain Jooste and Lieutenant de Klerk keeps telling me they ejected successfully… which only seems to be half the story.
How were they recovered? Were there SAN ships shadowing? C-130 SAR?
This has bothered me since reading about it in an issue of Warplane back in the 1980s!
Edit: neither of these gentlemen are mentioned in From Fledgling to Eagle but I assume they survived, otherwise their deaths would surely have been mentioned in the various reports.
Though I don’t think that even manly SAAF pilots could have swum back to the Cape..
Thanks,
CR
By: Dr. John Smith - 5th February 2013 at 20:21
SAAF Buccaneer ditching 1965: what happened to the crew?
Couple of other links that may be relevant/of interest
http://www.saairforce.co.za/the-airforce/history/saaf/attrition-summaries (but remember to manually select the year – 1965 – and scroll down the page as, by default, it will come up with 2013). Also, http://www.saairforce.co.za/the-airforce/history/saaf/attrition-summaries/17 lists ALL Buccaneer S.50s lost in SAAF service 1965-82
http://www.saairforce.co.za/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4924 (photo of SAAF 417 in Portugal on delivery flight)
http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/Aircraft_by_Type/Buccaneer.htm and www.ejection-history.org.uk/Country-By-Country/South_Africa.htm
– which states that the “brick” ended up in the drink “500 miles south of the Canary Islands”.
Is that correct? I always thought that the crash was much further south than that (i.e. off the coast of Angola – or at least in the southern hemisphere, somewhere south of the equator)
By: Cherry Ripe - 5th February 2013 at 18:56
Splendid, thanks guys! Good to know that they were rescued.
Edit: With the info in the follow-ups, I found this about SAAF Shackletons being scrambled in response:
1722 was scrambled, and only a couple of hours into the mission picked up the ‘blips’ from the
downed airmen’s SARAH beacons.Coloured flares were fired by both the Shackleton crew and the survivors in the Atlantic, to verify visual contact by all concerned.
Another MRJ, 1721, was drafted into what was no longer a search, but a rescue operation and two sets of Lindholme
Gear were dropped to the Buccaneer crew.The Dutch liner Randfontein was in the area and 1722 guided it to the rescue location,
where a successful transfer from life raft to luxury was made.1722, captained by Major Pat Conway, had flown nearly eighteen hours on the AR mission, which had been
undertaken as a text-book operation.
Cited from “Avro Shackleton” by Barry Jones here. Good teamwork by the C-130 of 28 Sqn and the Shacks.
/me ticks-off that question
Reminds me of the Nimrods that provided SAR “cover” for Harriers ferrying-out from Ascension in 1982. Basically to drop a dinghy and circle as long as possible… 😮
By: Alan Clark - 5th February 2013 at 18:40
I eventually found reference to the crash in an Australian paper called “The Age” from the 2nd November 1965.
“Johannesburg – The two man crew of a South African air force Buccaneer bomber being ferried here from Britain were rescued by the 13,694-ton Dutch liner Randfontein yesterday after crasing into the Atlantic the previous night. They kept afloat in rubber lifeboats – AAP – Reuters”
Sounds like they had good luck in being sighted, unless the vessel was aided by the crews’ SARBEs.
While not much it does at least answer the question.
Also there is mention in this link, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/rsa/sqn-28.htm
By: pogno - 5th February 2013 at 18:34
From the book From Spitfire to Eurofighter, by Roy Boot it states regarding the SAA delivery ‘The first Eight aircraft flew on a Multi-leg sortie to South Africa on 27 October 1965, during the course of which one suffered loss of control and crashed into the sea, the crew ejecting successfully and being rescued’.
Richard
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February 5, 2013 at 5:51 pm