August 1966: “Three Navy Flyers Rescued Near Pescadero Beach”

From the “Half Moon Bay Review,” August 1966

“Three crewmen aboard a navy trainer were saved by helicopters Friday after ditching their flaming plane in the ocean off Pebble Beach.

“Witnesses, seeing the plane skim along the water and then sink, called the sheriff’s office. At first there was no indication whether the occupants had survived.

“But later a flare ignited by the victims was spotted on the water. It was learned that the crew had inflated a life raft just before the S-2 training plane sank into the ocean.

“A Coast Guard plane flew over the life raft and spotted the survivors, who fired off more flares. Then, two helicopters arrived.

“One helicopter used  a rope ladder to rescue one of three men, according to sheriff’s deputy Lyle Arnold. The other helicopter landed on the water and picked up the other two victims.

“They were flown back to Monterey. The plane had come from a naval auxiliary field there, and was on a test flight.

“Rescued were the pilot, Lt. B.R. McClosky, Lt. D.B. Darnauer, student pilot, and M.R. Walsh, jet mechanic.

“Rosemary Conway, a teacher living in Cupertino, and two brothers from Chicago, Edward Curtin, 15, and Timothy Curtin, 12, said they saw the red-and-white craft coming from a northwest direction with smoke pouring from its right side or tail.

“It glided on the water ‘as if on a runway’ for several hundred feet, and then stopped and sank ‘within 15 seconds’.”

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