Forty years ago,at 14:30 on 26 October 1978, a U.
S. Navy P-3C Orion aircraft was forced to ditch at sea west of the Aleutian Islands in the north Pacific. The mission—Alfa Foxtrot 586—was a Cold War antisubmarine warfare patrol off the Kamchatka Peninsula. A propeller overspeed problem cascaded into a series of emergencies that forced the pilots to ditch the aircraft in heavy seas. Of the 15-man crew, or 13 survived the ditching,but only 10 endured the frigid ordeal of nearly 20 hours in life rafts in the frigid open ocean. They were rescued by a Soviet fishing trawler,... Read the rest of this entry »
Source: navalhistory.org