Daily News from New York, New York • 153

SUNDAY NEWS, FEBRUARY" 28, 1965 Sl fnA MM i I It 1 i fl I i i U. S. Ovit i.nartj Kulo Coast Guardsmen in 26-foot boat itruggla in 18-foot seas to tak four surviTors off badly listing freighter Smith Voyager (A) fall. American vessel foundered off Bermuda, and rescue call was relayed to Coast Guard' Search and Rescue Control Center ()-n Nejr York. Using ultra modern communications equipment, it directs all search and rescue operations on Eastern seaboard.

By GEORGE NOB BE ON THE sixth floor of the Bowling Green Customs House is a long, rectangular room that hums 24 hours a day, seven clays a week with a deceptive kind of tension. Here, in the control center of the Coast Guard Third District Search and Rescue Command, the difference between life and death is often a matter of seconds. i I i Norwegian tanker Stolt Dagali merchant fleet of over 1,000. Safety checks on pier and port equipment, weather watches on A ringing telephone, the staccato clatter of the teletype machines or the crackle of a radio message can activate a rescue operation that spans the Eastern seaboard from Indian River Inlet in Delaware to Watch Hill, R. just north of New London.

Bright pin3 and multicolored placards dot the navigational charts on the walls as though some harassed executive were striving manfully to keep track of a fast-moving sales force Pinpoint Equipment On Plotting Boards Instead, the pins represent every Coat Guard vessel in the North Atlantic, from the icy coastal waters of Canada's Maritime Provinces southward to the Caribbean. The big Cape class cutters, buoy tenders, giant floating weather stations, 82-foot Point class cutters, seaplane tenders, small motor launches they're all there. A radio station at Moriches, L. hot line telephones that link the Coast Guard's 22 stations up and down the coast, teletype, radar, sonar and newer initialed wonders like RATAN and AMVERS all feed into the control center. You can tell from a glance at the plotting boards what equipment is at Cane May or Manne-squan, Short Bech or Montauk, Eaton's Neck or New London.

Everything from collisions at tea to disabled fishing boats, air crashes to overdue cabin cruisers, eventually filters through this intricate web of communications. Large or small, it's handled first by the men in this one room. It's a far cry from the time of Alexander Hamilton, who as Secretary of the Treasury authorized construction of the" first Coast Guard fleet in 1780. It consisted of 10 cumbersome, heavy-keeled schooner whose primary function was to prowl th New England coast, htmtinr scooped them from the North Atlantio with landing nets and the skipper didn't want anyone to overlook the fact that his cutter had made a clean sweep of the rescue. Though SAR men get six months of boot training before they are assigned to a unit, Comdr.

James II. Durfee, SAR chief in the Third District, says on-the-job training is the only way to learn. "You can't find out in a boot camp the best way to board a burning cabin cruiser or learn what a ship under tow does in heavy seas," he said. 'Name of the Game Is Communication' "Once they're assigned to an SAR unit, the men get training in first-aid, small boat safety, navigation, weather, communications and boarding maneuvers. "But the name of the game i3 communication," added Durfee, who won a Coast Guard commendation medal last fall for a daring seaplane landing on the Open sea south of Bermuda to take a badly injured seaman off a freighter.

Nothing, illustrates his point better than the dramatic transcript of messages that poured into the Bowling Green SAR center the morning the Zim Lmes'i-Shalom sliced through the in neavy log on tne jersey coast: 2:22 A.M. "Coast Guard Radio Station New York. This is Coast Guard Radio Boston. Are you reading a. steamship with urgent traffic on 2182 kilocycles? Heard her call with PAN a distress signal similar to May Day), but am not reading her too good." 2:23 A.M.

Moriches, L. Coa3t Guard Station teletypes New York reporting receipt of Morse Code message: "SOS. This is motor vessel Stolt Dagali. Will amplify." 2:24 A.M. Coast Guard ships at sea hear the same signal and one cutter radios New York: "Shalom reports collision, n-known vessel, thick fog, position Lat.

40.U.5 degrees Long. 7S.U degrees 2:31 A.M. Moriches tells New York: "Shalom says other vessel definitely needs assistance. Shalom doesn't know name of. vessel." 2:33 A.M.

Boston teletypes New York: "Heard words 'collide and sinking, sounds like Stolt Dagali other vessel." 2:35 A.M. Moriches saysi "Shalom reports doesn't see other vessel. We advised her that Stolt Dagali sent SOS on 500 kilocycles and is sinking." 2:38 A.M. SAR center advises Shalom that fixed-wing aircraft ethevxBtter the high seas, ice-breaking missions and maintenance of more than 42,000 navigational aids like lightships, floating radio stations, and buoy3 are among the routine functions. BUT THE BREAD and butter of the Coast Guard is still search and rescue work, dubbed SAR.

Sometimes it Is tragic work, like the 1964 Thanksgiving Day collision of the Shalom and the Stolt Dagali or the Feb. 8 crash of an Eastern Airlines plana off Jones Beach that killed 84. Sometimes it is ludicrous, like the misadventures of the schooner Liki Tiki, which the Coast Guard hauled off sandbars six times, towed once when she developed engine trouble, and finally forgot about when she sank last fall off the Virginia capes. Often, there's' very little publicity given SAR missions, if only because most people take Coast Guard heroics for granted. Occasionally, the service will blow its own horn.

The skipper of the cutter Bibb once lashed a broom to his mast just befote he steamed into Boston Harbor with -69 survivors from the wreck of the Bermuda Comdr. James H. Durfee Key it communications, smugglers and making sure that tonnage dues and import duties were paid. The Revenue Marine, or Revenue Cutter Service, as it was later known, was expanded by the early 1800s and more powerful craft were built to war on French privateers and, later, slave ships. It was Coast Guardsmen who put down an abortive Seminole Indian uprising in Florida in 1836, and it was a Coast Guard ship that opened the Civil War by firing the first shot on Fort Sumter.

In the 20th Century, escort duty and anti-submarine warfare became a Coast Guard specialty. On D-Day alone, the service was credited with saving almost 1,500 Allied soldiers pitched into the sea from sinking landing craft. Today, the Coast Guard has more than 4,300 officers and well over 30,000 enlisted men spread over an area that extends from the Mediterranean and Caribbean to the distant reaches of the Atlantic and Pacific. Their duties include inspection of- an- estimated- five million pleasure craft; not' to mention Sky Queen 'aboard 'WiMiWH-Awt.