The incredible story of a daring Air Force pararescue mission in the middle of the Atlantic
5 years ago, a team of PJs leaped into the cold night air, landed in the middle of the Atlantic, and pulled off a daring rescue.
BY DAVID ROZA | PUBLISHED JUL 29, 2022 12:23 PM
This painting, by New Jersey Artist Todd L.W. Doney, commemorates a 2017 rescue mission in which Airmen assigned to the New York Air National Guard's 106th Rescue Wing flew 1,200 miles out into the Atlantic to save the lives of two sailors on the Slovenian freighter Tamar. (Todd L.W. Doney).
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From the Revolutionary War Battles of Lexington and Concord to the Afghanistan battle of Takur Ghar, the National Guard often immortalizes its most significant missions in the form of oil paintings. Last month, the Guard unveiled the latest such painting, which depicts a 2017 mission where seven airmen with the New York Air National Guard jumped out of an airplane in the middle of the night over the middle of an ocean to rescue complete strangers suffering from severe burns. It was a complicated mission that the airmen pulled together in less than a day, but they pulled it off, even when things went sideways.
“The amount of complexity in that mission just can’t be overstated,” said Col. Jeffrey Cannet, the commander of the New York-based 106th Operations Group, who piloted the HC-130 search and rescue aircraft on the mission, in an Air National Guard press release. “The fact that these guys had to do that, all out there, alone and unafraid, getting it done, was just a testament to their skill and ability.”
The incident began early in the morning of April 24, 2017, when an explosion aboard the cargo ship Tamar badly injured two sailors and killed two more. The crew of the 625-foot vessel, which was in transit from Baltimore, Maryland to Gibraltar, at the western edge of the Mediterranean sea, contacted the Coast Guard, which then contacted the New York Air National Guard and its 106th Rescue Wing. With its HC-130 search and rescue planes and trained pararescuemen, the 106th was best prepared to respond to the emergency. Still, the Tamar was about 1,500 miles off the New York coast, and that distance was a stretch even for these airmen.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-pararescue-tamar-mission/
