WT Forums

By KATE WILTROUT, The Virginian-Pilot
© January 29, 2005

NORFOLK — Bill Mellen was so intensely focused on landing the helicopter that he didn’t even hear his co-pilot say the words an aviator most dreads: Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Mellen, 34, had concentrated his entire being on the task at hand: maneuvering his stricken chopper onto the surface of the Atlantic.

His skill and training – and the rapid response of Navy and Coast Guard rescuers – helped save him and seven other crew members Tuesday when their MH-53 Sea Dragon helicopter hit trouble and went down about 28 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach.

On Friday, the pilot recalled flying about 100 feet above the water and knowing he couldn’t reach land in time. His choice: to fly until the craft shut down and plummeted into the ocean or to land as softly as possible at sea and scramble out.

“Basically, I realized I had one chance – to make a good landing,” Mellen said.

He asked the other pilot, Lt. Zach Graves, to raise the landing gear and issue a mayday distress call. Then he set the helicopter down. The rotors slowed. Water rushed in.

The mine-hunting copter pitched to the left, and everything went black. Mellen was underwater.

When the rush slowed, he released his seat harness and escaped through a window, breathing from a bottle containing two minutes of oxygen.

“Next thing I knew I saw the sky,” Mellen said.

He watched the helicopter float away, felt the cold and swam for a life raft pulled from the copter. There, the pumped up crew took stock: Everyone was alive, no one was injured.

Within a few minutes, a new reality dawned: They were alone in the ocean, risking hypothermia. Suddenly, they spotted a Coast Guard plane overhead. By emergency radio, they spoke to the pilot. Help was on the way.

Rescue swimmer James Burpee, a Navy petty officer, pulled six of the eight men from the crash site.

For two years, James Burpee spent upward of 16 hours a day confined to a cubicle as a CitiBank financial adviser. Then the lanky college grad decided he needed more adventure in his life.

The now-27-year-old petty officer third class got what he wanted when he helped save the crew.

The rescue swimmer from Texas spent more than 40 minutes in the frigid water, working against the wind from the rotors, an injured hand and a frozen mask to hoist the survivors to safety aboard a Navy search and rescue helicopter. Both the Coast Guard and the Navy had responded to the distress call.

Burpee recounted his story before heading to a lunch hosted by Mellen’s grateful unit, Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 14.

The incident is still under investigation, and it isn’t clear what caused the malfunction. But everyone made it out uninjured, reason enough to honor the crews that responded to the distress call – one each from the Chargers and Dragon Whales of Helicopter Support Squadrons 6 and 8.

Burpee’s helicopter, an H-60, was refueling on the Bataan, an amphibious assault ship, when Lt. j.g. Matt Meyers heard Graves’ “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” call over the radio.

It was about 3 p.m.

Meyers, a pilot, immediately knew it wasn’t a drill.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard a mayday call,” said Meyers, 26. Next came a tone from the chopper’s transceiver, an electronic beacon that emits a signal when it hits the water.

Meyers’ copter was aloft minutes later and reached the scene in about 20 minutes. Although the Coast Guard plane had beat them there, Burpee was the first rescue swimmer on the scene. With the helicopter hovering at 15 feet, he jumped in.

One report puts the water temperature at 48 degrees, another had it in the 30s. All Burpee felt was cold. In the 30 seconds it took him to swim to the life raft, he’d lost feeling in his hands.

Burpee, who grew up swimming in Florida’s temperate lakes and rivers, tried to think of something witty to say – but when he reached the raft, his teeth were chattering so hard he couldn’t think.

He went with the stock introduction: “Hello, I’m Petty Officer Burpee, and I’ll be your rescue swimmer today.”

“They were in great spirits,” he said.

Mellen remembers, “We were happy just to see his face there.”

Burpee harnessed the men to the rope one at a time so they could be hoisted aloft. Within minutes, another Navy rescue helicopter and swimmer arrived to help.

Burpee injured his left hand when it got tangled in the rope on one of the last hoists.

“It didn’t hurt until I got into the helicopter and started to warm up,” he said.

With half the men rescued, the job got harder. Two sets of pulsing helicopter blades flipped the life raft over – dumping the swimmers and four remaining crew members into the water.

“That was the only time in the whole rescue that I was kind of worried that I may not be OK,” Mellen said. “I thought, 'I’d hate to live through this whole thing then die of hypothermia because they don’t see me.’”

Then he felt one of the rescue swimmers grab his shoulder.

Burpee, the 6-foot-6 former financial adviser, was the last one out.

Meyers pointed the helicopter west and dropped off his passengers and Burpee at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center less than two hours after the drama began.

Mellen rode in on the second chopper, which refueled on the Bataan before heading to Portsmouth.

“I wasn’t too jazzed about hopping back on and into the air,” the pilot recalled.

Treated for cuts and bruises, Burpee and the eight survivors were released after a few hours.

The Navy’s local air command has requested salvage of the wreckage, which is resting in water 50 to 80 feet deep, said Lt. Cmdr. Chris Sims . A decision must be made soon: The transceiver is designed to emit its signal for just 30 days.

Like many people thrust into the spotlight for valiant actions, Burpee is a reluctant hero.

“It was something I was trained to do. I would say the true heroes are the pilots and the crew of the other helicopter. They made my job easy by all being in one place.”

Mellen counts the many ways in which his crew was lucky. The seas were calm. Their survival equipment worked.

“Obviously, training saved our lives. Worse things have happened to better people who aren’t here to talk about it,” said Mellen, a husband and father of two.

“For all of us to get out, and none of us to have a scratch, to me that’s just a blessing from God.”

"...some people will find any reason to complain. there's no pleasing some people. fuck it. living life makes more sense than thinking life. fuck it all and fucking no regrets. get over it. life moves on"