Florida Military Crew Rescues 11 Atlantic Crash Survivors With 5 Minutes of Fuel Left
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · May 14
Florida Military Crew Rescues 11 Atlantic Crash Survivors With 5 Minutes of Fuel Left
11 articles · Updated · The Guardian · May 14
Eleven Bahamian adults survived after a Beechcraft twin-prop ditched about 80 miles east of Melbourne, Florida, and rescuers reached them packed into a single small life raft after roughly five hours at sea.
Five minutes of fuel remained when an HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopter completed the last of nine hoists in choppy water, with some survivors needing urgent medical attention and a thunderstorm closing in.
A Combat King II transport plane and the helicopter were launched after the aircraft's emergency beacon activated on impact and was detected by the US Coast Guard.
The plane had been flying between Marsh Harbour and Grand Bahama in the Bahamas; no wreckage was visible when rescuers arrived, and the cause of the ditching is under investigation.
With only minutes of fuel left, what split-second decisions saved the last survivor?
How did lessons from a 1980 military disaster enable this flawless 2026 ocean rescue?
Does advanced rescue tech mask the risks of flying older planes over treacherous ocean routes?