Originally published in May/June 1962 issue TigeReview
Fate is a strange master of events. For instance, consider Cold Bay, AK. Cold Bay is as remote as it sounds: a tiny dot on the map of the vast Alaskan mainland. It is the last point on the continental United States before you take off across the long, bleak Aleutian chain.
The Bering Sea stretches cold and endlessly north and westward across the top of the world, and some 2300 miles distant, lies Tokyo.
The importance of Cold Ba and its population of 95 souls lies in the fact that it is on the most direct air route between the United States and Japan, and it represents a maximum point at which a heavily loaded air freighter can lug its full complement of cargo from America to the Orient with only a single refueling stop.
So the Air Force built a base there which commercial lines have used off and on for some years. When the Tigers began transpacific operations with the new CL-44 swing-tail freighters last year, Cold Bay became a vital link because of its strategic location as a point which the airline could use for refueling and make Tokyo in a single stop from Travis Air Force Base near San Francisco with a full load of cargo.
Life saved
And all because of this, a woman’s life was saved recently by quick action.
It was a moment of drama in the frigid north which Robb King, Flying Tigers station manager, will not soon forget, nor Ed Hembree at Tokyo.
King was sitting in the Tiger office at Cold Bay, wondering about a career that had dropped him into one of the world’s loneliest places when the door burst open and in came Ray Caudle, the FAA station manager at Cold Bay. It was 9:00 PM and Caudle hurriedly asked if the Tigers had any aircraft coming through bound for the States. He said the wife of one of the local weather men was suffering extreme pain from an abdominal disorder which had flared up on her return a few days ago before from Anchorage, some 500 miles distant, where she had been under a doctor’s care.
“We’ve got to get her to a hospital,” Caudle said. The nearest one was at Anchorage.
King needed to look at no charts nor schedules. He could tell you the Tiger flights for days back. There isn’t much to do in Cold Bay. He knew the only Tiger flight was a Tokyo bound freighter, CL-44, 50T due in about 5 hours.
“We can put her on there, I think,” King said.
But this required a passport.
Dad in Tokyo
Checking back, Caudle found that the woman and her husband had been in Japan only recently. She was Japanese and her father owned a large business in Tokyo, as well as a hospital. Her passport was in order.
Meantime, King, checking weight and balance, found that space weight-wise was available on 50T and he called Caudle back to tell him to get the woman, Mrs. Sumiko Romero, ready for the flight.
Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Caudle, who is a nurse, and Romero came to the Tiger office to ask King if he could advise Tokyo of the emergency and arrange an ambulance to meet the airplane.
Calling Hembree at Tokyo, King gave him the name and telephone of Mrs. Romero’s father, who completed arrangements for medical and ambulance service.
At 0212, 50T arrived at Cold Bay. While the aircraft was refueled and crew changes completed, station agents Al Williams and Duncan McLean took Mrs. Romero aboard a stretcher and placed her on an air mattress atop some freight, the only space in the heavily loaded aircraft. Her husband settled down beside her and at 0330, 50T blocked out with its emergency passenger and headed for Tokyo over the long waste of the Bering Sea.
Up front, the crew of Captain Rob Tharp, Copilot Rex Tripp, Flight Engineer Al Mohley and Navigator Carl Sharp trimmed 50T out for the fastest possible flight, chopping every needless mile out of their flight plan and searching for the least unfavorable headwinds. They had flown many emergency freight flights, but this time a life was at stake. Mrs. Caudle had said that she didn’t know if Mrs. Romero could survive the excruciating pain that wracked her body.
Met by ambulance
Tharp had a tough flight ahead. Headwinds blast across the Bering Sea, slowing the swiftest aircraft. He figured he had pretty close to 10 hours of flying ahead of him. As it was, 50T took nine hours and 50 minutes to reach Tachikawa Air Force Base at Tokyo. But when it rolled to a stop, Hembree and Mrs. Romero’s father were on hand with an ambulance, which quickly sped her to a hospital.
There, a doctor, after a quick diagnosis, performed emergency surgery. He said that if she had not been operated on within 24 hours of the start of the attack, she would have died. So 50T made it with time to spare. And back at Cold Bay, King and his crew settled down to chalking off the flights and contemplating the twist of circumstances that turned a Tiger freighter into an ambulance of mercy in one of the world’s loneliest spots.