By Chief Tom Rau, Coast Guard Group Grand Haven
On August 4th the Coast Guard will be 209 years old. It is, in fact, the oldest of our sea faring services. Yes, it’s even older than the United States Navy.
Undoubtably, its most noted mission is search and rescue. Each year the Coast Guard assist thousands of mariners, and annually saves over 5,000 lives. Much has been said and written about these feats and understandably so: rescues at sea have always stirred public interest. The recent search involving JFK junior’s aircraft is no exception. Some claim, however, that the Coast Guard may have used excessive resources and time in this case. I tend to disagree based on my own experiences, but then others are far more experienced than I can address this case. One person is Commander Roger Dubuc, Commander, CG Group Grand Haven. Not only is Commander Dubuc responsible for search and rescue along Michigan’s west coast, before arriving at Group Grand Haven, he was the Coast Guard’s assistant Chief of Search and Rescue for the Great Lakes. While questioning the Commander I was impressed with his working knowledge of search and rescue and in particular the JFK search.
Commander, do you feel the CG used excessive resources in this search?
"No. Search efforts have a number of variables unique to each case. These include the size of the search area, water temperatures which directly effect survivability, on-scene search conditions such as visibility, and number of search resources available. In my experience, the search effort for the Kennedy aircraft was pretty normal given the extremely large size of the initial search area and the small amount of initial information available to search planes. Many people may not realize that the initial search area was some 3000-4000 square miles and included all of Long Island Sound, Rhode Island Sound, Block Island Sound and large stretch of open ocean. Effectively searching an area of this size takes a lot of people, boats, and aircraft. As in any search of this magnitude, vessels and aircraft were released as the search area was narrowed to the waters southeast of Martha’s Vineyard. Search efforts were ultimately suspended after crash site was located. "In a similar type of crash 12 miles west of Grand Haven which occurred in April of 1997, a far less complex search effort was required since the crash site was located within 1 and ½ hours. In that case, even with a floating debris field clearly marking the crash site, we continued to search for survivors for 16 hours despite a water temperature of 36 degrees which can reduce in-water survival time to a matter of minutes." Commander, what about the Coast Guard’s involvement after they found the aircraft?
"The continued presence of the Coast Guard after the Kennedy aircraft wreckage was located was also not unusual. When our search and rescue missions are complete, we are periodically called upon by other agencies such as the Navy, FBI, or NTSB to assist them in investigative or recovery work. This type of work is conducted strictly in support of other government agencies, and it is done at their request. If we have sufficient resources available to assist these agencies, we will normally help out to whatever extent we can. It should be noted, however, that our ships are not outfitted, nor are our people trained to conduct underwater search and recovery missions. While the Coast Guard Cutter Willow did tow a sonar apparatus, this was not a piece of Coast Guard equipment, but was provided by another vessel. The numerous Coast Guard small craft on scene throughout the recovery operation, were provided to keep the recovery area clear so that salvage crews could safely work without interference from press boats and numerous other curious onlookers. This is a fairly normal Coast Guard role in any high profile marine disaster." The Commander is certainly right about that. Consider the chaos at the Kennedy crash site without a means to keep the area clear from outsiders. The fact is, the Coast Guard has always used available resources to assist mariners. We are now in our third century of doing this and I suspect our role in the JFK case is more a reflection of that time-proven commitment than the media cares to disclose. But, just ask the 5,000 or more people whose lives the Coast Guard saves annually about what we will do to assist those in need. Boaters certainly can help us with this time-honored commitment by boating smart.
Channel 16 is for safety and emrgencies, Channel 09 is for calling fellow boaters
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Boat Smart 
