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Pacific Rescue: a Cartoon Starring the Fish Packer Cape Perry

by Dirk Septer 2020

Cape Perry

The Cape Perry (Photo from the Dirk Septer collection.)

In February 1950 the 72–foot fish packer Cape Perry gained notoriety by her rescue of 10 surviving US Air Force service men off the west coast of Princess Royal Island, south of Prince Rupert. They were part of a 17–men crew who had abandoned their Convair intercontinental B–36 bomber after they had dropped their Mk. IV nuclear weapon near Ashdown Island late on February 13, 1950.

The vessel’s owner, Canadian Fishing Company Limited, went so far as to issue a Gold Seal Salmon Promotional Giveaway about this rescue. Describing it as "A thrill–packed story based on the true facts of an air–sea rescue by the crew of the Cape Perry of a US air crew that parachuted into the wilderness," it actually makes for some interesting reading.

Three engines of the giant B–36 bomber had caught fire over British Columbia’s northwest coast. Faced with these multiple engine fires, the crew abandoned the aircraft over Princess Royal Island, about 320 miles north of Vancouver, BC. Before the crew bailed out, they dropped a Mark IV nuclear bomb in the Inside Passage, not far from where BC Ferries’ Queen of the North would go down more than half a century later.

After the crew jumped the aircraft was supposed to have ditched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Almost four years later, however, the wreck of the bomber was found accidentally in a remote location in the coastal mountains of British Columbia, three hours’ flying time in the opposite direction of where it was supposed to have crashed.

Later after years of silence, the United States would finally admit to losing its very first nuclear bomb together with the B–36. The incident would thus become its first Broken Arrow, the code name for accidents involving nuclear weapons. Questions remain whether the bomb dropped had exploded over the Inside Passage, or was blown up at the aircraft’s resting place in the mountains.

Shortly before midnight on Monday, February 13, 1950, radio operators at the United States Air Force’s Strategic Air Command headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska received distress calls from B–36B Bomber Serial 44–92075, which was flying off the north coast of British Columbia. The aircraft belonging to 436 Squadron, Eighth Air Force, Seventh Bomb Wing, Seventh Bomb Group of Strategic Air Command, was en route from Eielson AFB near Fairbanks, Alaska, to its home base at Carswell AFB, Fort Worth, Texas. The bomber had taken off two days earlier from that base for a training mission to Alaska and back, to test the operational characteristics of the aircraft and its nuclear payload under severe winter conditions

Canadian search master D.G. Bell–Irving later recalled the search for the bomber and its 17 missing men. "As search master, shortly after the distress call I telephoned the Royal Canadian Navy operations centre at Esquimalt in the middle of the night." As soon as she could get up steam, the Esquimalt–based Tribal–class destroyer HMCS Cayuga (DDE 218) was at sea. "Apart from the position report given with the distress call, we had little to go on, so the area to search was vast. We decided to concentrate initially on a sea search; low cloud precluded a search over the mountainous area of the coast."

Most of the airmen landed on the west shore of Princess Royal Island near the western end of Whale Channel. In a later radio–telephone interview with the Canadian Press from the Cape Perry, aircraft commander Captain Harold Barry stated, "I came down in the middle of a lake on Princess Royal Island, but made shore safely where I spent the rest of the miserable night. I tried to build a fire but the wood was too wet. My parachute was so wet it didn’t do me much good for warmth during the rest of the night."

When morning came, Captain Barry was hungry, and when he saw a ground squirrel, he fired at it twice with his pistol and missed both times. "But my shots attracted Lieutenant [Raymond] Whitfield, my navigator [copilot]. He blew his whistle and we walked toward one another. We got together and started plodding through the snow and underbrush. It was rough."

After rear gunner Staff Sergeant "Slicky Dick" Thrasher’s chute popped open, he made just one swing to the left and another to the right; then he was in the trees. "I landed in a big tree in the dark. I could not get loose from my parachute, so I cut myself free with a knife." Thrasher could feel a big branch with his foot and when his eyes got used to the dark, he discovered that the branch was actually a root. He was only a few feet above the ground. Right after he landed, Thrasher said that he saw the aircraft he had just exited. "I was still in the tree trying to cut my shroud lines with my pocket knife when the plane came back over. I saw it after it came back over. It was traveling southwest, mostly south, about 190 degrees." Thrasher estimated he landed about 2.5 miles in from the west shore of Princess Royal Island. "I spent the rest of the night in my one–man life raft," Thrasher continued. "I was all by myself. The raft kept me dry."

Next morning being cold, he climbed the tree to try to get his chute. "I wanted to wrap myself in it. "When I got to the top of the tree, I began yelling for all I was worth." The aircraft’s navigator and radar operator answered. "I recognized Jim Ford’s, the radio operator, voice when he replied. They couldn’t have been more than a quarter mile away." Thrasher made his way toward them. "I headed for small clearings that looked like easier going, but they were actually slush ponds. At a larger slush pond, I inflated my life raft that I was packing with me. Then I sat in it but couldn’t make it move." Thrasher subsequently abandoned the life raft there and went back, going over and under deadfall logs. He finally joined Ford and Lieutenant Paul Gerhart, the radar operator.

"We found another gunner," stated Thrasher, referring to Staff Sergeant Martin Stephens, who had booted him through 075’s tiny rear escape hatch. "Then we found another officer [Lieutenant Colonel Daniel MacDonald]. We were weak and decided to build a tent out of our parachutes and a life raft. After a lot of trouble, we finally got a little fire going. We were lucky. We had our lighters and some lighter fluid, but everything on the ground was wet. We had a hard time keeping the fire going through the second night."

Here Ford picks up the story. "We made a teepee out of a parachute and I remember that we emptied our pockets and wallets of any paper we had to make a fire, except money," Ford explained. "Once we got a fire going, we tried to dry our socks and get warm, but it was a pretty miserable night, although I didn’t even come down with a cold after all that exposure."

When morning came, the men decided to try to walk out to the coast. On the way, the men followed two sets of tracks and found Captain Barry, and co–pilot Raymond Whitfield. When they reached the coast, they tramped an SOS in the snow on the beach and filled the impressions with tree boughs to make the letters more visible from the air. "Whitfield built a fire," Barry said, "and we threw a lot of wood on it. That was the smoke the fishing boat saw." It was just after the men had started to build the fire when they heard a motor. "At first it sounded like a plane, then we decided it was a boat. Barry and I walked down to the shore and began shooting flares," Thrasher said. "It was a Canadian fishing boat. I think it was about 2:30 pm, Wednesday. The Canadians really treated us fine. Aboard the boat were three others of our crew members. I was really happy to see the boat, for I fully expected to spend another night in the snow."

Cape Perry

Ten airmen rescued by fishing vessel Cape Perry warming up with a mug of coffee at Port Hardy, BC. (Photo from the Vancouver Sun.)

Early that afternoon on February 15, the crew of the Cape Perry sighted a wisp of smoke among the trees on Princess Royal Island. The fishing vessel had been on her way from Butedale to Helmcken Inlet to pick up a load of herring for delivery to Vancouver. Having been informed of the crash, like all other vessels passing along the coast, the Cape Perry had been keeping a special lookout. Captain Vance King immediately dispatched a small rowboat and found the first two survivors, Lieutenants Ernest Cox and Roy Darrah.

Lieutenant Cox, who was the third man out of the forward hatch, was thus the first to be picked up by the Cape Perry. He landed about 200 yards inland from the western shoreline, a position that supports the possibility that the two who had jumped before him were still over water when they landed. "When I jumped, I cleared the airplane and pulled my rip cord," Cox said. "I landed in a tree and had been there when I heard the airplane coming back; I saw it. It was in a slight left turn. It swung around and turned right over where I landed." It took Cox two hours to get out of his parachute. He dropped his rubber life raft to see how far it was to the ground. Fighting the dark, he sensed a branch from a nearby tree, tossed his parachute to it, swung across and slid to the ground. Speaking for his nine shivering and unshaven buddies, Lieutenant Darrah later told his rescuers, "It was the most horrible night in my life."

Corporal Richard Schuler, the aircraft’s radar mechanic and the fifth man to leave the front exit of the aircraft, was the "lone wolf" among the 12 survivors in that he was the only one of them who never saw another of his mates between the time he "hit the silk" and the time the Cape Perry answered his frantic waving of a piece of white parachute from the beach.

When the vessel blew its horn in recognition, Schuler said, "I just dropped to my knees and said a prayer." He had landed in a tree that collapsed his parachute and then had fallen some 20 feet to the ground. "I landed flat on my chin," he recalled. "It knocked me cold. I don’t know how long I was out but it was still dark when I awoke. I just lay on the snow and curled up." He then passed an uneasy, wakeful night alone, listening to some animal prowling about his improvised parachute tent. "He was just on the other side of a tree," Schuler recalled. "I only had a screwdriver but I sure was going to pounce on him if he came after me." In the morning he actually did discover some bear tracks. Disoriented and alone, Schuler first thought he was on the mainland and headed east in search of a road during the first day. The demanding terrain forced him back toward the coast, where he spent a second harrowing night.

When the rescued airmen came aboard, the first thing King asked was how they had parachuted. "They said they had dropped as number three and number seven, so I knew I was in the circle where the others should have landed. About one-half mile down the beach, we picked up a third man." The third man was radar mechanic Corporal Schuler. Then, as King was turning to leave, he saw another wisp of smoke. When he investigated, he found seven more men huddled on the shore, waiting for rescue. They had been forced to leave behind an eighth, radio operator Staff Sergeant Vitale Trippodi, who was rescued at a later date. Cape Perry

Sergeant Trippodi in a Neil–Robertson stretcher as Cayuga’s motorboat is being lowered to take him to a US Catalina flying boat to be flown to McChord A.F.B. for medical treatment. (Photo from Department of National Defence, E–010858701.)

While the Cape Perry was picking up the survivors, HMCS Cayuga had continued her journey into Queen Charlotte Sound and was only 70 miles away when, at 1:45 pm, it received a radio message to head toward the Cape Perry to pick up the 10 survivors who had been rescued. Making 25 knots, the destroyer reached the southern entrance to Squally Channel to the west of Princess Royal Island in 2 hours and 45 minutes.

After the Cape Perry’s crew radioed their position, the Cayuga also arrived to assist in the rescue, assuming control of the ground and surface–vessel search along the west coast of Vancouver Island. On Wednesday, the US Coast Guard had two cutters, Winona (WPG65) and Cahoone (WSC131), standing by the Canadian vessel. Other vessels nearby included the US Coast Guard cutters Citrus (WLB300) and White Holly (WAGL543), plus the 70–foot Canadian federal fisheries patrol vessels Babine Post and Chilko Post. Ground parties sent inland found and treated Staff Sergeant Trippodi. The search continued into Thursday, when the twelfth and final survivor, Lieutenant Charles Pooler, was discovered and taken aboard HMCS Cayuga.

Crew members of the Cape Perry such as Harry Menzies Jr., Scotty Van Horne, and Edwin Johnson never got much chance to talk with the survivors. Almost three hours after they came aboard the Cape Perry, the 10 men were turned over to the US Coast Guard cutter White Holly and subsequently picked up by a US Coast Guard Catalina flying boat.

In 1997, in a telephone conversation from his home in New Braunfels, Texas, the then 82-year-old Pooler recalled, "Getting out of a tree, I fell 40 feet and broke my right ankle." He limped a mile down the mountain to a frozen lake and settled in to await rescue. "I had one of those search and rescue signaling mirrors and began signaling a rescue plane that flew right over me. It flew over me twice and I could see the reflection from my mirror dancing on its fuselage, but the crew never saw me and the plane flew on off." Pooler lay there for three nights, assuaging his hunger with a candy bar he had bought on his way to Carswell AFB to begin the flight. "I remember dragging out that candy bar and counting the squares and figuring out that if I ate one square of chocolate a day, I could eat for nine days."

On the morning of February 16, having lost track of time and suffering from exposure, he heard voices calling in the distance. He cried out. "I lay there in that ice and snow for a day or two until I was found by a Canadian rescue team who got me to a ship." By then the original group of 10 crewmen, brought together and nourished aboard the Cape Perry, had been evacuated to Port Hardy, on northern Vancouver Island. Charles Pooler and Trippodi had to wait aboard the Cayuga for the arrival of a US Air Force Catalina amphibious aircraft, which flew them directly to McChord AFB. After handing over the 10 rescued airmen, the Cape Perry proceeded on her way to Vancouver.

It was actually a good thing the seven survivors set the fire when they did. Captain King would later explain that he was ready to leave the area with the three men he had rescued when they noticed a wisp of smoke that called them back. In a later interview to International News Service by radio telephone King described the dramatic rescue of the 10 men he saved. "All were in poor condition," he said, "although not actually in dire straits. All were wet, weak and hungry. They were too tired to talk. Some tried to smile their thanks but they could only make a sour face. They were just too tired to lift their lips in a smile. Mostly, they were wet, soaking wet, for 24 hours." Captain King said, "I felt pretty good about getting those guys out. We had a bottle of rum and a bottle of scotch aboard and gave them some drinks. Then we gave them some ham and eggs and put them to bed aboard our boat. I never saw a braver bunch of men." It was pitch dark when the crew jumped and they did not know exactly where the aircraft was, except that it was over land. "They had no idea where the eventual crash of the plane may have been," said Reuben Schenk, Cape Perry's mate.

In a short radio–telephone interview before he and the other survivors on the Cape Perry were flown to Port Hardy, Captain Barry described some of their harrowing experiences. "We are all in good shape. We were over the island when we bailed out. I was the only one to land in the water. It was the toughest country I have ever seen. I landed in the water in the middle of a lake but struggled ashore. With the exception of Staff Sergeant Trippodi, all the men are in good shape but are very tired. All of them have been soaking wet since the crash. We were heading 165 degrees at 5,000 feet when the men bailed out."

Cape Perry Cartoon

Cover of cartoon comic book. (Photo from Dirk Septer collection.)

After this brush with fame, depicted in Canadian Fishing Company’s Pacific Rescue cartoon, the Cape Perry continued her fishing career on the west coast. In 1965 Alf Ritchie purchased the vessel and renamed her Miss Terri. Ritchie dragged with the vessel out of Prince Rupert for many years. Later the Miss Terri was switched to a herring and salmon seiner with partner Frank Long as skipper. In 2018 the Miss Terri, now owned by Scott Ross of Heriot Bay, BC was seized by the Canadian Coast Guard and taken to Ladysmith for scrapping. Currently the scrapping plans are reported on hold as a result of negotiations by the owner.

References:

The Vancouver Sun, (Vancouver BC) news coverage for several days in February 1950.

Septer, Dirk, 2012. Lost Nuke. The last flight of Bomber 075. Heritage House Publishing Company Ltd., Victoria, BC.


To quote from this article please cite:

Septer, Dirk (2020) Pacific Rescue: a Cartoon Starring the Fish Packer Cape Perry. Nauticapedia.ca 2020. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/Cape_Perry.php

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