Edmund Fitzgerald
May 23, 2020 23:17:13 GMT -5
Post by Jon on May 23, 2020 23:17:13 GMT -5
Copied form Quora. Posting here to feed some discussion on two topics written about by Wes, the Edmund Fitzgerald and US Coast Guard. This description was something I never expected some 45 years after the loss of the Fitz.
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What was the most infuriating moment of your military career?
by Rick Berg
Y10 November 1975. I was a 19-year-old seaman in the Coast Guard, stationed in Duluth, MN. I was “off duty”, had eaten supper and was killing a little bit of time before heading to the bars across the river in Superior, WI. I was standing in the door to the radio room visiting with the radio man. It was an utterly normal night, late enough in the year so all of the fishing boats and sailboats were out of the water and in winter layup - even some of the ore boats had called it a season and had entered winter lay-up. The day before we had experienced one hell of a storm but that evening, in Duluth it was cold but the storm had passed and the wind and the lake were both calm.
While I was standing there the radio crackled to life “Coast Guard Group Soo, this is the Arthur M. Anderson” (this is one of the largest ships on the Great Lakes, a thousand-footer; Group Soo is the CG group responsible for the Eastern third of the US side of Lake Superior, located in Sault Saint Marie, MI). Group Soo responded and the Arthur M Anderson reported “We’ve been following the Edmund Fitzgerald and she just disappeared from our radar (or words very close to that)”. Here is an excerpt from that radio call; the initial moments of the call were not recorded:
First it was utterly apparent the Fitzgerald was lost; any survivors would be in grave danger. They were in freezing, stormy weather miles from any shelter. The storm was strong enough so even CG policy prohibits launching of helicopters (and we fly into hurricanes). The only CG ship available anywhere nearby was the Woodrush and she was in Duluth, undergoing significant repair work. What a terrible set of circumstances!
Standing there in that radio room door, my blood ran cold. I immediately knew the significance of that radio call and the machinery it was now engaging. I was stationed at the small boat station in Duluth, and the only boat we had that was capable of that kind of rescue was the 44’er but she was very slow and the probable location of the wreck wasn’t in our area of responsibility; nonetheless we made her ready “just in case” (she was already ready to go but she got started and crewed). It was decided the Woodrush crew would be recalled and made ready to sail. It was the right decision, and the crew of the 44’er stood down.
I grabbed a phone book and went into the XO’s office and started calling all the bars in Superior while someone else did the same for the bars in Duluth from the CO’s office. People aboard the Woodrush called the off-duty crews at their homes. Within an hour the entire crew of the Woodrush (minus one person) had been assembled and went to work reassembling the Woodrush and making her ready to go to sea. Wikipedia says all this took two and a half hours but my recollection is that it didn’t take that long.
I recall Woodrush crew flying into the parking lot, running from their cars to the ship while at the same time the media arriving in droves. I was afraid someone was going to get hurt or killed so I took it upon myself to herd the media into a safe place and urged them to park their vehicles in the station’s parking lot. It was fast becoming a media circus - with all the TV stations breaking into programming for live broadcasts, juggling for the best view literally pushing other reporters and so on. I recall being very pissed at these people. I saw a very dark side of the news that night.
After the Woodrush departed and the news crews left I had a really unexpected experience. I was just nineteen years old, a young and very inexperienced Coastie. I like everyone else that evening had done the best they could but it was all a fool’s errand. The crew of that ship didn’t stand a chance; deep down inside we knew we were risking lives to chase after dead men. Like almost everyone in the Coast Guard, I joined with the specific desire to save lives and make a real difference; here my first really significant experience in the CG wasn’t about saving lives, it was chasing after already dead people. Not only that we were putting a ship full of live people at risk to do it. But I still felt responsible for those 29 men who now lay at the bottom of the lake - they were the very people I enlisted to save.
As I looked back from that short distance in time, I asked myself if I could have done anything different, anything better? My answer was “No”; I wasn’t even on duty; I did what I could, I took the initiative and did what I could without being told. That didn’t shake the terrible guilt I felt, somehow, some way, I felt as if I’d failed. That was of course illogical but was none the less what I felt. That kind of introspection in a nineteen-year-old is both natural and not a good thing. It becomes baggage you carry for the rest of your life. Looking back, I should have seen a therapist, been given an opportunity to “talk it out” with someone but in 1975 that is not how it it worked in the Coast Guard — instead the next day was just another day at work.
Speaking of the next day, by the time the Woodrush reached the search area the storm had subsided and they were able to launch C130’s and helicopters to aid in the search. Only a little debris was discovered but there was enough to determine where the Fitzgerald sank. In the weeks and months that followed I was more an observer than a participant although I did help transport a ROV that was flown into Duluth from Wood’s Hole, MA. It was a bright yellow submarine small enough to fit in the back of a pickup truck along with a couple thousand feet of cable.
This course of events has had a significant impact on my life: it is both a point of pride at how well the CG worked and a great deal of regret over the loss of life.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
What was the most infuriating moment of your military career?
by Rick Berg
Y10 November 1975. I was a 19-year-old seaman in the Coast Guard, stationed in Duluth, MN. I was “off duty”, had eaten supper and was killing a little bit of time before heading to the bars across the river in Superior, WI. I was standing in the door to the radio room visiting with the radio man. It was an utterly normal night, late enough in the year so all of the fishing boats and sailboats were out of the water and in winter layup - even some of the ore boats had called it a season and had entered winter lay-up. The day before we had experienced one hell of a storm but that evening, in Duluth it was cold but the storm had passed and the wind and the lake were both calm.
While I was standing there the radio crackled to life “Coast Guard Group Soo, this is the Arthur M. Anderson” (this is one of the largest ships on the Great Lakes, a thousand-footer; Group Soo is the CG group responsible for the Eastern third of the US side of Lake Superior, located in Sault Saint Marie, MI). Group Soo responded and the Arthur M Anderson reported “We’ve been following the Edmund Fitzgerald and she just disappeared from our radar (or words very close to that)”. Here is an excerpt from that radio call; the initial moments of the call were not recorded:
First it was utterly apparent the Fitzgerald was lost; any survivors would be in grave danger. They were in freezing, stormy weather miles from any shelter. The storm was strong enough so even CG policy prohibits launching of helicopters (and we fly into hurricanes). The only CG ship available anywhere nearby was the Woodrush and she was in Duluth, undergoing significant repair work. What a terrible set of circumstances!
Standing there in that radio room door, my blood ran cold. I immediately knew the significance of that radio call and the machinery it was now engaging. I was stationed at the small boat station in Duluth, and the only boat we had that was capable of that kind of rescue was the 44’er but she was very slow and the probable location of the wreck wasn’t in our area of responsibility; nonetheless we made her ready “just in case” (she was already ready to go but she got started and crewed). It was decided the Woodrush crew would be recalled and made ready to sail. It was the right decision, and the crew of the 44’er stood down.
I grabbed a phone book and went into the XO’s office and started calling all the bars in Superior while someone else did the same for the bars in Duluth from the CO’s office. People aboard the Woodrush called the off-duty crews at their homes. Within an hour the entire crew of the Woodrush (minus one person) had been assembled and went to work reassembling the Woodrush and making her ready to go to sea. Wikipedia says all this took two and a half hours but my recollection is that it didn’t take that long.
I recall Woodrush crew flying into the parking lot, running from their cars to the ship while at the same time the media arriving in droves. I was afraid someone was going to get hurt or killed so I took it upon myself to herd the media into a safe place and urged them to park their vehicles in the station’s parking lot. It was fast becoming a media circus - with all the TV stations breaking into programming for live broadcasts, juggling for the best view literally pushing other reporters and so on. I recall being very pissed at these people. I saw a very dark side of the news that night.
After the Woodrush departed and the news crews left I had a really unexpected experience. I was just nineteen years old, a young and very inexperienced Coastie. I like everyone else that evening had done the best they could but it was all a fool’s errand. The crew of that ship didn’t stand a chance; deep down inside we knew we were risking lives to chase after dead men. Like almost everyone in the Coast Guard, I joined with the specific desire to save lives and make a real difference; here my first really significant experience in the CG wasn’t about saving lives, it was chasing after already dead people. Not only that we were putting a ship full of live people at risk to do it. But I still felt responsible for those 29 men who now lay at the bottom of the lake - they were the very people I enlisted to save.
As I looked back from that short distance in time, I asked myself if I could have done anything different, anything better? My answer was “No”; I wasn’t even on duty; I did what I could, I took the initiative and did what I could without being told. That didn’t shake the terrible guilt I felt, somehow, some way, I felt as if I’d failed. That was of course illogical but was none the less what I felt. That kind of introspection in a nineteen-year-old is both natural and not a good thing. It becomes baggage you carry for the rest of your life. Looking back, I should have seen a therapist, been given an opportunity to “talk it out” with someone but in 1975 that is not how it it worked in the Coast Guard — instead the next day was just another day at work.
Speaking of the next day, by the time the Woodrush reached the search area the storm had subsided and they were able to launch C130’s and helicopters to aid in the search. Only a little debris was discovered but there was enough to determine where the Fitzgerald sank. In the weeks and months that followed I was more an observer than a participant although I did help transport a ROV that was flown into Duluth from Wood’s Hole, MA. It was a bright yellow submarine small enough to fit in the back of a pickup truck along with a couple thousand feet of cable.
This course of events has had a significant impact on my life: it is both a point of pride at how well the CG worked and a great deal of regret over the loss of life.