The mid-watch is difficult...
Illustration
The "mid-watch" is difficult under any circumstances whether you are standing it as a hospital nurse or on military duty. And four o'clock in the morning is the worst time of all. Every effort of the mind to fight against the oppressive demand for sleep seems to fail.
Eyelids seem weighted against any possibility of staying open, until some alarm reaches through the shadowed brain ... a monitor, an urgent message, adrenalin flows. All systems come to the alert.
Such was the situation far too often at the Naval Communication Station, Pearl Harbor. A flash message for Commander-In-Chief Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC). A distress signal from an aircraft over the north Pacific had been heard. Shortly thereafter contact was lost. Even in an age of satellites, horning beacons and navigational aids, finding an object at sea is tremendously difficult. No such helps were available in those years.
All the ships at sea, military, coast guard and civilian aircraft were alerted. Radio frequencies were monitored. Search and rescue plans were implemented, starting the search in even larger circles and quadrants. From the sky the vastness of the sea is overwhelming ... shimmering sunlight, breaking waves, flotsam of all kinds, dictate against visual sighting of something so small as a life raft or a humanbeing bobbing in a life vest.
In three years of experience not a single downed aviator at sea was found, except, we pray, by Jesus coming to them, walking on the water. "... Oh hear us when we call to Thee, for those in peril on the sea."
Eyelids seem weighted against any possibility of staying open, until some alarm reaches through the shadowed brain ... a monitor, an urgent message, adrenalin flows. All systems come to the alert.
Such was the situation far too often at the Naval Communication Station, Pearl Harbor. A flash message for Commander-In-Chief Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC). A distress signal from an aircraft over the north Pacific had been heard. Shortly thereafter contact was lost. Even in an age of satellites, horning beacons and navigational aids, finding an object at sea is tremendously difficult. No such helps were available in those years.
All the ships at sea, military, coast guard and civilian aircraft were alerted. Radio frequencies were monitored. Search and rescue plans were implemented, starting the search in even larger circles and quadrants. From the sky the vastness of the sea is overwhelming ... shimmering sunlight, breaking waves, flotsam of all kinds, dictate against visual sighting of something so small as a life raft or a humanbeing bobbing in a life vest.
In three years of experience not a single downed aviator at sea was found, except, we pray, by Jesus coming to them, walking on the water. "... Oh hear us when we call to Thee, for those in peril on the sea."
