TOW AFTER DITCHING

Press, Volume C, Issue 29699, 18 December 1961, Page 20

TOW AFTER DITCHING

Flying Boat Saved (NJZJ’A.-Reuter— Copyright) MIAMI (Florida), Dec. 1«. A fast power cruiser from Nassau raced througSt treacherous shallows yesterday to rescue seven men who had ckmg through the night to a disabled flying boat. The cruiser Maggie reached the aircraft, a converted Catalina, shortly after dawn and towed it to sheltered waters in the lee of Green Cay, a tiny island 75 miles south-east of Nassau. Tbe rescue was made 13 and a half hours after the aircraft ditched. All aboard were reported unharmed. An oil leak in the port engine forced the pilot to make an ocean landing 65 miles south of Nassau. A distress call was picked up by a civil airliner and relayed to the Coast Guard at Miami. Coast Guard search planes soon located the flying boat and circled overhead, dropping flares, until the Maggie arrived at 7 s.m, after a six and a half hour ran from Nassau. The flares were to enable the men aboard to keep the plane from piling up on jagged rocks rising out of the sea. The Maggie, moving as close as she dared toward the plane, put over a small boat to carry a tow line. The men aboard were returning from a business trip to Caracas when the plane ran into trouble. It apparently scraped a reef on landing but they reported they bad “controlled” flooding of the cabin.