Author: Bob O’Connor, with Leo Picone and Jerry Preston: In gratitude to, and in memory of Dick Hartranft and Lyle Hansen, the “guys up front” that day.
(We knew nothing of the Mooney’s ditching and the pilot’s rescue, as reported in the last newsletter, just that a pilot was still missing, so, on Monday morning we launched to find him.)
Heading southwest (225 ̊magnetic), down the course Mooney #3 should be coming up from St. Pierre, the weather worsened. The wind picked up and the ceiling dropped. We leveled at 600 feet, lookouts alert, and began trying to raise him on VHF Guard. Visibility was limited by salt spray, but the view from aft was spectacular - and unsettling. LH-8’s outer wing sections were flexing and the tip tanks flapping like some giant metal bird; and at the same time high wave crests made it look like we were down at two or three hundred feet working an ASW problem. The farther we went, the heavier the chop, but we needed eyes on, so everyone just strapped in. Forget coffee, - try pouring a cup and you’d get it in your lap; few even thought about opening their box lunches.
We found 4YA, Ocean Weather Ship Alfa, pitching and rolling heavily, but maintaining station, 500nm west of Iceland and 340nm south of Greenland. They hadn’t heard from the missing aircraft. Their Noon GMT weather: overcast at 700 to 1,000 feet, visibility 2nm, winds 060 degrees at 42 knots, waves cresting at 22 feet. Basically, IFR, with gale force winds and heavy seas. LH-8 could deal with it, but bad news for anyone hand-flying a 2,500 pound, 200 hp light aircraft. Those almost direct headwinds would reduce Mooney #3’s groundspeed and push its trip time to Iceland well past 13 hours. If the pilot then had to ditch he faced 30 minutes to exhaustion, 90 minutes to inevitable death.
We kept searching down track for another hour, then turned around and combed the route back up towards Iceland. We never heard from the Mooney or sighted debris that might have come from a small aircraft. Disappointing! All told, we were airborne for over eight hours, and the pounding didn’t ease until we were almost back at KEF. On the ramp, wind gusts even made refueling risky because it was so hard to keep your footing on those wet and slippery wings. Mission unsuccessful, but all for a good cause - or so we thought.
Looking back, though, something wasn’t right. Rescue operations the day before had prompted a stir, but absent detailed flight plans or results from a formal inquiry, only vague, contradictory, and confusing theories subsequently appeared online. And all referred to two aircraft, not three. For example:
- “Two Mooneys crash on takeoff due to weather”: Poor weather conditions and mistakes by both pilots during takeoff led to loss of two Mooney M20E aircraft near Keflavik. . . .
- “Midair collision between two Mooneys, one death”: A tragic incident involving two Mooney M20E aircraft near Iceland resulted in the loss of one life from a midair. . . .
- “Severe weather led to nav errors & crashes of two Mooneys”: Two Mooney M20E aircraft lost in Iceland due to adverse weather, leading to nav errors and crashes. . . .
If three Mooneys had departed St. Pierre at dawn Sunday, and the third hadn’t landed anywhere, he must have ditched and lost his life later that same day, somewhere in the Denmark Strait, when his fuel ran out. But there’s nothing - from radio intercepts or other sources - to support the idea that he ever existed. Most likely, all references to “Mooney #3” were by-products of confusion about the ditching and lack of detailed flight plans (numbers, call signs, ETAs, etc.) – possibly because staff at St. Pierre were unfamiliar with international ops and slow to pass along paperwork. Upshot: our roller-coaster ride hadn’t been a day late - it was never even necessary!
Research has confirmed that Mooney #1, a new aircraft registered to its German buyer as D-EHNI, was the one that landed safely in Reykjavik. It changed owners over time, ending up in Darwin, Australia. There, Mother Nature, in the form of Tropical Cyclone Tracy, wrecked it on the ground, along with two dozen others, on Christmas Day, 1974. Mooney #2, registered to its buyer in Finland as OH-MOC, does not appear in records after 20 September 1964, so it was the one that ditched. So, Mooney #3 never really existed.
The loss of OH-MOC wasn’t the result of weather or a midair. It was caused by ferry pilot #2’s poor nav skills and lack of common sense. Ferry pilot #1 was a competent navigator, but agreeing to dodge Canadian ATC restrictions also showed his personal disdain for both the ATC system and for ferry pilot guidelines: “Knowing when to go and when to wait is the most important skill. Impatience kills ferry pilots.” Impatience led to Pilot #2’s ditching, but unlike most who’ve disrespected the unforgiving High North Atlantic, he got a very rare second chance, a do-over, a mulligan, thanks to our sister squadrons, the VP-7 Black Falcons and VP-8 Tigers. Sixty-two years later, we can only hope he went on to use it wisely – in a second career, on the ground, somewhere in the lower forty-eight.
Crew 8, VP-21, September 1964: Dick Hartranft, PPC; Lyle Hansen, CoP; Bob O’Connor, 3P/Nav; Jon Melkerson, Tacco; Larry Jackson, Plane Capt; Ron Novay, 2nd Mech; Bill Rule, 1st Tech; Mike Weatherington, 2nd Tech; Lee Harper, Elec; Bruce Prigge, Elec; Jerry Preston, Radio; Leo Picone, Ordnance.
[1] Leo Picone and Jerry Preston, who agree with the author that this was the roughest flight they ever experienced.
[2] British Oceanographic Weather Center, www.bodc.ac.uk
[3] See footnote # 1
[4] Type into the search box: “Three Mooneys face accidents near Iceland on 20 September 1964”
[5] https://banterops-aerohflog.blogspot.com/2011/11/20th-september-1964.html
[6] https://adastron.com/cyclone-tracy/tracy-damaged-aircraft.htm
[7] Ferry Flight Guide, 2026: https://rotatepilot.com/guides/ferry-flight-guide#requirements