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“Surviving the Perfect Storm”
by
Mark F. Soupiset
Last summer’s release of The Perfect Storm, a movie depicting the true story of
the sword fishing boat Andrea Gail and its disappearance at sea, introduced millions of
theatergoers to the terror and violence wreaked by the massive meteorological disaster
that churned the North Atlantic in late October 1991. Hundreds of miles southwest of the
doomed Andrea Gail, USAA members Lt. Col. David Ruvola and Lt. Col. Graham
Buschor learned about the storm first hand. The pair — both helicopter pilots at that time
with the 106th Rescue Wing of the New York Air National Guard — were called upon to
help save a civilian on a sinking sailboat 250 miles off the New Jersey coast. Their story
of courage in the face of life-threatening danger was told in gripping detail by Sebastian
Junger, author of the best-selling novel, The Perfect Storm. A composite story of several
such real-life rescues by the Air National Guard and U.S. Coast Guard also became a
subplot in the movie.
Late on the afternoon of October 30, 1991, with co-pilot Buschor at his side,
Ruvola flew an Air National Guard H-60 helicopter over the thundering sea in near-total
darkness toward the stranded vessel. The crew included flight engineer Jim Mioli and two
pararescue jumpers (known as “PJs”), John Spillane and Rick Smith. After two mid-air
refuelings from a C-130 tanker plane and more than an hour of flying into the worst
weather they had ever faced, the H-60 crew was unable to attempt the rescue.
“We were looking down at 30- to 40-foot seas and the winds were 40 to 50
knots,” says Ruvola. “We didn’t know whether or not a PJ dropped into the water would
be able to make it onto the boat, and whether or not we’d be able to get him back off the
boat. The hoist operator was concerned that — because of the size of the wave-swells —
the cable could be snapped while hoisting someone back into the helicopter.
“All considered, we decided to allow the C-130 that was overhead to drop
survival gear [to the stranded sailor] and head for home,” Ruvola explains. Fortunately,
the crew of a Romanian freighter eventually pulled the man to safety. But because of a
fluke communication mix-up earlier that day, Ruvola didn’t have the necessary weather
information to prevent what would happen next.
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A band of rain 80 miles long and 50 miles wide was closing in on the H-60 as it
made its way west toward home. At 8 p.m., Ruvola was attempting to connect with the C-
130 to refuel when the helicopter hit a wall of 75-knot headwinds. “It was very, very
turbulent and we were trying to find smoother air to complete the final refueling,” recalls
Ruvola. “We continued to climb and even descend below the clouds. At one point, we
were 500 feet above the water and you could see the ragged, bottom edge of the clouds
mixing on the horizon with the whitewater of the ocean.” Visibility was so bad inside the
clouds that, on occasion, Ruvola was unable to see the C-130’s wings directly in front of
him.
An hour-and-a-half later, after 30 harrowing attempts between 4,500 feet and 300
feet made unbelievably difficult by weather-damage to the C-130’s left-hand fuel drogue,
the H-60 had only 20 minutes of fuel remaining. Unable to complete the refueling
maneuver, Ruvola made the fateful and necessary decision to ditch into the Atlantic. Co-
pilot Buschor issued a mayday over the radio’s emergency frequency and alerted the
Coast Guard cutter Tamaroa, a few miles to the northeast. “I remember very vividly my
call for help,” says Buschor. “I was painting the Tamaroa on our radar, so I knew it was
only 12 miles away. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough fuel to go that far.
“The Tamaroa responded almost immediately and told us to head toward them.
We knew the number one engine was about to roll off-line because of fuel starvation,”
Buschor says. “I remember telling the Tamaroa, ‘Negative, negative, we are ditching
right here!’”
At an altitude of 200 feet, the H-60 pierced the bottoms of the clouds and, from a
hovering position just above the wave crests, Ruvola told his crew that ditching was
imminent. While the crew prepared to abandon the helicopter, Ruvola’s primary concern
was to make sure the massive helicopter didn’t hit them on the way down. Moments after
Ruvola gave the order to bail out, Buschor, Smith and Spillane — in that order — jumped
into the howling storm. Smith and Spillane, without the aid of night-vision goggles,
didn’t know how far they would fall because of the 80 foot waves below them. If they hit
crests, they would have dropped just 10 feet or so. As it turned out, both likely plunged
between 60 and 70 feet, hitting wave troughs at close to 50 miles per hour.
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“The wind was kicking up salt spray, the landing lights were making everything
hazy and beyond that it was pitch black, so really I couldn’t see anything at first,”
Buschor recalls. “Fortunately, my night-vision goggles were still attached to my helmet. I
wasn’t willing to jump without being able to see, so I flipped the goggles back over my
eyes, took a deep breath and jumped off the footboard.” He fell about 15 feet, inflated his
LPUs (life preserving units) and landed on the top of a wave crest. “In the military you
train to the point that it gets boring and monotonous,” he says, “but what’s amazing is
that when you get into a stressful situation, you respond the way you were trained. It’s
almost like you’re on automatic and you don’t have to think about what to do next. Once
I hit the water, the first thing that entered my mind was to consolidate survival gear and
look for other survivors. That’s when it became apparent I was going to be doing that the
rest of the evening,” explains Buschor.
To avoid the risk of being pulverized by the H-60’s rotors at the time of impact,
Ruvola utilized what’s known as a hovering auto-rotation, something like downshifting a
car, to slow the rotors by feeding the force of gravity back through the engine. He and
Mioli smacked the ocean while still onboard the dead helicopter. Inside the flooded crew
compartment, in total darkness and upside down, they had only the air in their lungs at
their disposal. Ruvola’s HEEDS bottle — a three-minute supply of air strapped to his leg
— had been lost when the helicopter hit the water. “You’re trained in dunker training to
always maintain a hand-hold in underwater situations like that,” explains Ruvola. “With
that hand-hold you know pretty much where you are in relation to the exits on the
helicopter. My primary exit was the pilot-door next to me. I grabbed the handle, turned it
and the door opened, thank God.”
Once outside the helicopter, Ruvola was able to trip the LPUs on his vest, which
made him buoyant, and shot to the surface. Moments later, he was able to locate Mioli
who, without the aid of a survival suit, was already shivering in the frigid water. Ruvola
tied himself to Mioli with parachute cord to keep the hypothermic flight engineer as
warm as possible. “I took my wet-suit hood from my pocket and put it on Jim’s head to
help keep him warm,” Ruvola says.
Eventually, and miraculously, Spillane found Ruvola and Mioli, thanks to
emergency strobe lights on Ruvola’s survival suit. Buschor was drifting several hundred
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yards away already. Smith was nowhere to be found. The trio clung to each other — and
to life — for several more hours. Spillane had broken four ribs, one bone in his left leg
and three bones in his right arm. He had also ruptured a kidney and bruised his pancreas.
Mioli was fighting to remain coherent in the 60-degree water. Ruvola was trying to help
them both.
Four hours passed in the raging darkness. In that time, the Tamaroa managed to
navigate the 12 miles to the spot where the H-60 ditched. Twenty-five minutes later, the
crew of the Tamaroa used its cargo net to rescue the furiously swimming Buschor from
seas that, at times, placed him 30 feet above the men trying to save him. “I couldn’t
believe I was on the deck of the Coast Guard cutter,” says Buschor. “I didn’t think I was
going to make it, and it was almost an overpowering sensation that I had made it that far.
The guys immediately picked me up and threw me inside, cut my clothes off and
wrapped me in blankets. I was pleading for something to drink, but they wouldn’t give
me anything because they were afraid I might have internal injuries.”
About 40 minutes later and nearly a mile from the spot where Buschor was pulled
aboard, Spillane, Ruvola and Mioli were rescued in the same manner — vomiting
seawater as they were pulled to the deck. Mioli suffered from severe hypothermia and
Spillane was bleeding internally. Though all four would live to tell their stories, their
colleague and friend, Rick Smith, was tragically lost at sea. “Rick was a great guy with a
very quiet demeanor — a true professional,” says Buschor. “He knew his stuff. Losing
him was very hard. What I couldn’t fathom was that he was a PJ, yet I made it out alive
and he didn’t. It is extremely difficult to accept the loss.”Smith, one of the most highly
trained survival swimmers in the world, was never located despite nine days of round-
the-clock searches by the Coast Guard.
- Story reprinted with permission from the January/February 2001 issue of USAA
MAGAZINE.