Still playing a critical role in U.S. skies

About 2,000 feet above southeastern Connecticut - Keith Neilson's voice cuts through the muffled noise of the single-engine red, white and blue Cessna 182 Skylane flying above the rolling hills, lakes and rivers of southeastern Connecticut. He's talking to his observer, retired U.S. Air Force navigator Lawrence Kinch.

The two men, volunteers with the Thames River Composite Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol, are on a training mission and are trying to home in on their search target - a blue tarp - on a sunny and crisp January day.

Kinch, the squadron commander, monitors a small digital direction finder waiting for the two lobes - or lines - to intersect, indicating that they're over their target. Neilson, the pilot, concentrates on flying the four-seat aircraft close enough to get a clear - and safe - view of the target.

"Current heading is 325 ..."

"OK, come back to 320, please."

"Three-twenty is on course."

"OK, we're on the nose."

"… Closing in on it, the side lobes are beginning to converge, we're getting close ..."

"We're out at 2,000 feet (going) for 1,500 … looks like we've got some ice fishermen down on Gardner Lake."

The men tweak their course and speed to nudge the plane toward the target.

"Right on the nose - side lobes are converging nicely."

"No traffic right or left ..."

"… OK, she's coming down the right-hand side."

"OK, the target must be right below us then."

"Yep."

"… OK, time into target is 12:01 and target sighted at 12:02."

Neilson and Kinch are two of 700 Connecticut volunteers who make up the state's Civil Air Patrol contingent, a group affiliated with the U.S. Air Force that flies in noncombat missions ranging from search-and-rescue and drug interdiction to transporting medical supplies and tracking weather damage.

Vital first-responders

Commissioned a week before the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the patrol started as a group of civic-minded civilian pilots who wanted to do something to help their country. The squadrons were responsible for transporting materials and goods across the U.S. and spotting German submarines prowling the East Coast to support the war effort while military pilots and crews were off flying combat missions.

When the war ended, the CAP went back to its original role with the added responsibility of promoting aerospace education, establishing cadet programs, supporting emergency services and conducting nonmilitary search-and-rescue missions over the continental U.S. Today, it conducts about 90 percent of these missions.

The CAP's purview eventually expanded to include assisting local, state and federal emergency officials, transporting Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel and supporting Department of Defense and federal Drug Enforcement Administration initiatives.

There are now about 59,000 volunteer members in 1,500 squadrons in the U.S. The Connecticut wing, which is part of the national CAP's Northeast Region, consists of 12 squadrons that include senior members - those over the age of 21 - and cadets ranging in age from 12 to 20.

The squadrons are made up of air crews and ground teams, and regardless of whether they're located on the Mexican border or along the coastline, they're trained to the same standards.

CAP members' status as civilian volunteers shouldn't be taken to mean their training standards are lower than military pilots and crews.

"They are important," John W. Desmarais Sr., the deputy director of operations for the CAP's national headquarters at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, said of the group's members. "They have formal training programs just like every other USAF unit. They get evaluated on their performance."

"People's lives are at stake, so we can't risk sending someone up who doesn't know what they're doing," Kinch added.

At the federal level, the squadrons are responsible for nearly all inland rescues because of their capability to fly low and slow over a variety of terrains looking for downed aircraft. Nationally, CAP air crews fly about 112,000 hours a year.

Seventy-two lives were saved in CAP search-and-rescue missions in 2009, Desmarais said. The yearly average is 80.

About 12,000 CAP members are part of air crews, and the rest work in support-service positions or as members of ground-search crews.

A three-man air crew conducts the primary part of search-and-rescue missions. They either use a digital locator that homes in on an emergency transmitter or, if they have to, perform a more labor-intensive visual search. When a downed craft is found, the air crews radio the volunteers on the ground.

Oftentimes a crash site is not near a main roadway, and crews find themselves hiking through rough terrain to reach the location. The ground crews, trained in basic first aid, stay with the wreck until federal Transportation Security Administration personnel arrive.

Memorable missions

After Sept. 11, 2001, the CAP's scope was expanded to include missions for the newly-created Department of Homeland Security.

Neilson said 9/11 is a day he remembers well.

"The stress of flying on September 11th … there's no training you can get for that," he said. "We were flying blood and intravenous transfusion equipment down to Kennedy Airport ..."

At 8,000 feet over New London that day, Neilson and fellow Thames River squadron member Paul Noniewicz had no doubt about where they were going. For the next 120 miles, they flew toward the plume of smoke rising from New York City in front of them.

While much of the squadrons' work can be mundane, such as finding an emergency beacon that was accidentally activated, when a call is received from the Air Force Rescue Coordinator Center at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, crews are trained to handle the stress and urgency, according to Matthew Valleau, the acting commander for the Connecticut Wing.

Members of the local Thames River squadron, based at Groton-New London Airport, listed these among their most memorable missions:

• The search in the northern half of Long Island Sound for a missing Piper Saratoga. They later found out they had been looking for John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane, which was found five days later in the waters off Martha's Vineyard.

• The rescue of three children from a small-airplane crash in southwestern Massachusetts just before Christmas four years ago that resulted in the deaths of their parents and two siblings.

• The search for a lost Learjet in December 1996 in the mountains of New Hampshire - the plane and its deceased two-man crew from Connecticut was found three years later.

• The discovery of a lost one-man helicopter in the Killingly area, where a crew member was found alive.

• The rescue of a stranded windsurfer in Long Island Sound during CAP's annual summer support of the U.S. Coast Guard.

An experienced team

The Thames River squadron is housed in three former construction trailers on Tower Avenue in Groton. It receives reimbursement for the cost of any missions flown on behalf of the U.S. Air Force. The Connecticut Wing gets a stipend from the state of roughly $35,000 for administrative costs, cadet programs and maintenance to the wing's five aircraft, including the Thames River squadron's Cessna 182.

The local squadron consists of volunteers that include retired military officers, a teacher, an engineer, a director of public works for a major hospital and an upper-level manager at a computer firm.

"I'm very fortunate to have in my squadron a number of people who are former active-duty, now retired, Navy and Air Force pilots and flight-crew members," Kinch said.

"The bottom line is we come from different walks of life, but the neat thing is we all bring something special," said Neilson, who has been flying for 40 years and owns Docko Inc., a marine civil engineering firm in Mystic, .

"I like almost all the aspects of CAP flying because it's very precise and takes a lot of thought process to be good at it. It requires everyone to be confident in the plane or they won't stay focused on what they're looking for," Neilson said. "When it comes to a mission, we trust each other to get through a lot of stress. There is no comparison to anything else I've ever been able to do."

Members join the air patrol for different reasons, but at the core of their interest is the love of adventure and the desire to help people in need. They do their best to balance their responsibilities with their home and work lives.

'No other feeling like it'

On a recent clear, cold Saturday, the Thames River squadron gathered by "0800" military time to be briefed on the day's training mission. Flying conditions were as close to perfect as it gets for a January morning.

There were two targets to be found in less than an hour. The first required the crews to use special equipment inside the plane to find an electronic locating transmitter; the second required a more strenuous visual search.

The third of six sorties to fly on the training mission that day, which included Neilson as the pilot and Kinch as the observer, reached the first target in the Gardner Lake area of Salem shortly after noon. The other target area, east of the Old Lyme golf course, was located at about 12:30 p.m.

"When the mission is done, and we've been able to do it successfully, there is no other feeling like it," Neilson said.

By late afternoon, the training mission was nearing a close, and the CAP air crews fell into the familiar routine of heading for home - and transitioning back into their lives outside of the search-and-rescue arena.

"OK, this would, ah, conclude our search. We will conclude sector search at 25 past."

"Groton Mission Base CAP 603 over."

"Groton Mission Base CAP 603 go."

"Groton Mission Base CAP 603 departing grid three-three-niner delta at 12:25, local over."

"Returning to base."

"Groton Mission Base CAP 603 is RTB over."

"Understand, ah, CAP 603 is RTB and Groton Mission Base out."

m.bard@theday.com