Coast Guard Rescue in Hurricane : La Habra Pilot Wins Medal for Saving Lives

A Coast Guard helicopter pilot from La Habra received the Air Medal on Thursday for two rescue operations during an October, 1985, hurricane, one from a freighter that had run aground, the other from a sinking sailboat.

Lt. Ted Le Feuvre, 35, received the award, the second most prestigious Coast Guard flying medal, in a ceremony at Belle Chasse Naval Air Station in New Orleans. Also receiving Air Medals were Le Feuvre’s crewmen, Lt. (j.g.) Tony Kovac, 28, of Oakland and Petty Officer 2nd Class Wade MaCalester, 25, of Tampa, Fla.

In presenting the medal, Rear Adm. Peter J. Rots said Le Feuvre had decided during both incidents to complete the rescues despite an instrument indicating that the helicopter was “over-torquing.” Such a condition can cause the craft to stall, Le Feuvre said Thursday night in a telephone interview from Coast Guard headquarters in New Orleans.

Le Feuvre was piloting an HH-65A Dolphin helicopter on Oct. 28 when he and his crew flew to the assistance of the 465-foot freighter Sybil One, which had run aground against a jetty at the mouth of the Mississippi River in 20-foot seas whipped by Hurricane Juan. One of the vessel’s crew members had already fallen off the ship and was crushed to death between the freighter and the jetty.

The freighter was listing between a 20- and 70-degree angle each time a wave rolled in. Twelve crew members had been lifted off earlier by another Coast Guard helicopter, and nine men remained aboard.

In high winds, Le Feuvre stationed the Dolphin over the ship and lowered a rescue basket. The wind was blowing in off the ocean, striking the side of the ship and creating an updraft that buffeted the helicopter, Le Feuvre said. As the wind pushed the Dolphin around, waves were smashing against the stricken ship.

“Finally I got into a stable hover, and the instrument light flashed on. We immediately left and entered forward flight to try and analyze it,” Le Feuvre said. Although the warning light stayed on, he figured it was a malfunctioning indicator and decided to go ahead with the rescue, lowering a two-man basket to the deck.

“We finally got them up, but we had to take them one at a time. The bad part was they all wanted to take their luggage. We’d pull up one man and his suitcase with all his clothes.”

Two days later, the helicopter crew was dispatched to pick up survivors from an overturned oil rig. En route, with Kovac at the controls, they received orders to assist a sinking 60-foot sailboat, the Ella Mae B.

The sailboat had lost power in 30-foot seas and had taken a wave over the bow that destroyed most of the wheelhouse and the cabin. The seven men on board had managed to keep the vessel afloat with the use of a pump dropped by a Falcon jet and were steering the bow into the waves to avoid being rolled over.

One Man Jumped

Before the helicopter arrived, one of the seven men had jumped over and attempted to swim to a nearby oil rig work boat. As he neared the boat, a wave drew him underneath it. “It was amazing he wasn’t killed,” Le Feuvre said. He said the other six decided to stay on board.

As the copter arrived at the sinking sailboat, the same warning light appeared on the instrument panel, but Le Feuvre chose to ignore it based on his successful effort two days earlier.

Visibility was about half a mile, and the crew had to fly about 100 feet in front of the sailboat and 100 feet above it because the wind was pulling the rescue basket back that far. “It’s called a no-reference rescue because the pilot cannot see the boat below. He’s totally dependent on the crewman’s instructions, and the crewman is looking behind him at a boat 100 feet away,” he said.

After about 20 minutes, they had managed to pull four men onto the helicopter and were attempting to pick up the last two.

40-Foot Wave

“The last guy was supposed to have tied the wheel, the rudder, so it would continue to go into the seas. But I guess it broke because as we started to pick them up, the vessel moved and climbed up to the top of a 40-foot wave,” Le Feuvre recalled.

“It stopped at the top and then sailed down the other side, broached and started a real violent roll. When it did that, this 60-foot mast started to swing around. I looked up and saw the mast about 20 feet from the door . . .

“At that point I knew we were in trouble because the (rescue basket’s steel) cable had twisted around the mast. We have a device called a shear that’s supposed to cut the cable, but it didn’t work. So MaCalester’s yelling, ‘shear, shear,’ and there we were attached to the vessel.

“The basket was still on the deck with these two guys in it, and the boat started down this wave. All of a sudden, the slack jerks out of the cable; it snapped and dropped these guys about 10 feet onto the deck.”

Without the cable, the helicopter was unable to help the last two crewmen and had to leave for a nearby oil rig. Another helicopter arrived shortly afterward and pulled the other two men off the sailboat before it sank.

Le Feuvre said the problem with the stress indicator light aboard the helicopters has been ironed out.

“Being there wasn’t so scary,” he said. “I was thinking in a detached, matter-of-fact viewpoint. I saw the mast, I knew what had to be done, and when it didn’t shear I knew we were in trouble. Looking back now is what’s scary.”