In short
Coast Guard rescue of fishermen after the La Conte sank in the Gulf of Alaska on Jan 30, 1998, during an Arctic storm with 50-foot waves (rogue waves to ~70 feet) and ~38°F water. Multiple helicopter attempts failed until a third H-60 Jayhawk rescue succeeded, saving three men; a fourth fisherman fell from the basket and died.
Key claims
Alaska flying at ~300 feet is visually deceptive (darkness, spray, mountains hidden by weather); navigation errors can be fatal; hoist success depends on tight pilot/hoist-operator communication; even with training, nature can overwhelm rescue efforts.
Notable examples
misinterpreted radio alert by Alaska Airlines; waves coming within ~6 feet of the aircraft; Doppler showing wind pushing the helicopter “backwards”; flares used for station keeping; HF antenna broken by a buoy ball; recovery to Yakutat for extra ~45 minutes.
Guests
Retired Coast Guard Captain Steve Torpy, H-60 Jayhawk pilot/aircraft commander; also referenced: CO Ted Lefevre, pilots Bill Attucks and Dave Durham, flight mechanic Fred Kalt, rescue swimmer Mike Fish, and the fallen fisherman Mark Morley.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Sinking of the La Conte
0:45 to 3:53
Details about the La Conte's sinking and the initial rescue attempts.
“In the midst of a hellish Arctic storm, the survivors were forced to abandon ship into water that was about 38 degrees Fahrenheit, surrounded by 50-foot waves, with some rogue waves reaching as high as 70 feet.”
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3:53 to 4:10
Promotional message for the Capital One VentureX Business Card.
“And with big purchasing power, you can spend more and earn more.”
Flying the Sikorsky H-60 Jayhawk
4:10 to 6:17
Captain Torpy discusses flying experiences in Alaska.
“For more details and an additional chance to win, visit OneEveryCorner.com.”
Personal Life Before the Rescue
6:17 to 7:50
Steve Torpy shares insights about his life leading up to the rescue mission.
“You said you were having a quiet night with your wife.”
Initial Briefing and Tension
7:50 to 10:05
Torpy describes the initial briefing and the tension as the first helicopter returns.
“statements on the radio that said they were making an approach to the water as if they were crashing in the water.”
Preparing for the Rescue Mission
10:05 to 14:00
Details on the preparations and decisions before Torpy's helicopter takes off.
“out from heat exhaustion and was being transferred to the ambulance because he was unconscious and needed medical care.”
Transitioning to the Right Seat
14:00 to 15:40
Learn about the dynamics of command and responsibility during a flight.
“open and I looked up at him and said, Captain, what do you think about the right seat?”
The Call to Action
15:40 to 17:40
Discover the initial stages of a rescue operation in a treacherous storm.
“to find the fishermen which is about 120 miles away around 15 minutes into the flight and alert went off.”
Navigating the Storm
17:40 to 19:05
Understand the pilot's challenges in navigating strong winds and visibility issues.
“And the needles that are pointing to where the location of the emergency beacons in the water are basically spun.”
Dropping Flares for Reference
19:05 to 21:05
Learn how flares were used to aid in rescue operations amidst chaos.
“And we were both kind of chuckled about it and descended down to 100 feet where the needle pointed to.”
Show all 18 chapters
The Thrill of Rescue
21:05 to 22:38
Experience the adrenaline rush of a near-miss during a rescue attempt.
“but the aircraft's nose was 30 degrees nose up.”
The First Successful Rescue
22:38 to 25:34
Witness the emotional impact of successfully rescuing a fisherman.
“But at that point, I could see the survivors.”
The Challenges of the Second Hoist
25:34 to 28:00
Discover the difficulties faced during the second rescue attempt amidst worsening conditions.
“They did some really, really smart things, though.”
The Tension of the Rescue Attempt
28:00 to 29:36
Experience the heightened emotions during the rescue operation as challenges arise.
“And I remember just like waiting for the next piece of information that Fred to give me to tell me things are all right.”
Difficult Decisions in High-Stakes Situations
29:36 to 31:10
Learn about the critical decision-making process during the rescue mission.
“I have never felt so deflated and so just, I didn't know how to recover from it.”
The Aftermath of the Rescue
31:10 to 33:11
Discover the crew's feelings and reflections after the intense rescue operation.
“We did try to recover him using the basket.”
Coping with Loss in the Coast Guard
33:11 to 35:18
Understand the psychological impact of losing a person during a rescue operation.
“So you get back and it's what, 3, 4 a.m.?”
Closure and Reflection with Survivors
35:18 to 36:25
Hear about the emotional closure sought after the incident with the survivors.
“Did you ever see the fishermen you rescued again?”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Steve Torpey:Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of Against the Odds ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. From Audible Originals, I'm Mike Corey, and this is Against the Odds.
0:40Steve Torpey:On the evening of January 30th, 1998, a fishing boat called the La Conte sank in the Gulf of Alaska. In the midst of a hellish Arctic storm, the survivors were forced to abandon ship into water that was about 38 degrees Fahrenheit, surrounded by 50-foot waves, with some rogue waves reaching as high as 70 feet. Despite the conditions, the Coast Guard Air Station in Sitka launched multiple rescue attempts. The first two helicopters were unable to save the fishermen, but a third finally succeeded in rescuing three of them. The pilot of that third helicopter is my guest today, retired Coast Guard Captain Steve Torpy.
1:23Steve Torpey:Captain Torpy, Steve, welcome to Against the Odds. It's nice to be here, Mike. I think most of our listeners probably have the perspective of seeing the scenes that pass underneath from maybe an airplane passenger window. But I imagine being the front seat of a helicopter, you can see so much, especially up in Alaska, where there's mountains and all sorts of glaciers and things. Can you talk a little bit about what flying in Alaska is like? How is it different than flying in other places?
1:52Mike Corey:Two things come to mind. First of all, we fly at 300 feet most of the time in the Coast Guard. We're at 300 feet above the water or above the land, mostly water in Alaska. So there are days where you can look out and see like 8 ,000 foot mountain peaks covered in snow. It's an amazing view. And then there are days where you launch in the middle of the night and you don't see a thing. I remember flying several hours within a quarter of a mile of a very big mountain and never seeing it. Just using the radar, using the GPS to navigate through very narrow fjords to get to a location at 300 feet and never seeing a thing.
2:31Mike Corey:Just the nature of flying in Alaska. That's what makes it so hard.
2:34Steve Torpey:We're going to speak more about this later, but let's dive into this particular night we're talking about. Tell me about the conditions that day.
2:42Mike Corey:For me, it was a Friday night. My wife and I, Carrie, had just kind of settled in for an evening that was rainy and windy, but that's very common in Alaska. And it wasn't until later on that things got interesting. So for me, it was just a quiet Friday night. But the sea wasn't so quiet, was it? Until I got offshore, I didn't have any idea what the sea state was. So when we were heading out there, we were at 300 feet and I couldn't see the ocean. It was too dark. It was too much sea spray, too much rain, snow. So didn't really see the water until we got into a 100-foot hover. And it was then that we realized how big the ocean was.
3:24I had never seen routine 50-foot waves.
3:27Mike Corey:And whenever there's a 50-foot wave, there's always some that are bigger. And I had never seen anything like that.
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5:16Steve Torpey:So, Steve, you and your fellow Coast Guards fly Sikorsky H-60 Jayhawk helicopters in Alaska. Can you give us just a general layout of what it's like to fly one of these?
5:27Mike Corey:The H-60 is a beast. I credit it with my life, honestly. Without that aircraft, I don't think I'd be able to give this interview. It has got an enormous amount of power. It's built like a truck, and it needed to be that night for us. It goes about 300 miles and then can spend 45 minutes on scene and then fly 300 miles back. So about a 600 mile radius. They fly about 180 knots speed. They can go as high as 13 ,000 feet, but we rarely do that. They can hold about six to 10 survivors. It is very similar to the Navy's Seahawk helicopter and is basically born from the army lineage of Black Hawk helicopters.
6:09Mike Corey:I loved flying it, and I feel like I could do just about anything in that aircraft while I was flying it.
6:16Steve Torpey:So January 30th, 1998, it was a Friday. We spoke about that. You said you were having a quiet night with your wife. Can you paint a picture of just what life in general was like for you back then?
6:28Mike Corey:Carrie and I were having a ball. We were fairly newly married. We were stationed in Alaska. Carrie's from a small town in Michigan, so she was very comfortable in a town of 2 ,000 people. and Carrie was four months pregnant with our first child that night. So I had been home with her and fortunately I had not had anything to drink because that would have meant that I couldn't have accepted the mission. I would have had to disqualify myself. I think the fact that Carrie was pregnant, maybe I was being a little sensitive to that. So about nine o 'clock is when the phone rang and that's when they called me in.
7:02Steve Torpey:So the phone rang and then when you got to the base in Sitka, what was the situation that you were briefed on? What did you learn at first?
7:10Mike Corey:Well, the first observation I had when I drove to the air station, it's only three miles from my house, and every light in the place was on. There were people running around, and there was all this activity in the hangar. Hangar doors were open. So I parked the car, went up to the operations center, and the commanding officer, Ted Lefevre, was also in the operations center. and there were lots of other people there as well, all trying to figure out if our aircraft had just crashed. And it turned out it was a mistake. But as I'm standing there at the op center desk, realizing there's something huge going on right now, and I'm just about to learn what's happening.
7:49Mike Corey:And it turned out that Alaska Airlines had misinterpreted one of our helicopter's statements on the radio that said they were making an approach to the water as if they were crashing in the water. So once that got resolved, then they could start telling me and Captain Lefevre what was happening. They started briefing us on the fact that we had launched the first helicopter and they were coming back. The second helicopter had left a few minutes before I got there and was currently on scene. And I was going to be the third helicopter. And it was still a chance that I wouldn't go. But I do remember putting my hands in my pockets because I didn't want my captain to see my hands shaking.
8:29Steve Torpey:Well, I imagine the adrenaline and just looking at the odds and the situation must have been quite an ordeal to understand, digest what's happening.
8:39Mike Corey:When we learned that the first helicopter had been out there for three hours and was coming home because they couldn't affect the rescue, and the second helicopter was on scene trying, that told me right there that the conditions were something I've never, that none of us had really experienced before and very unusual because we're all cut from the same cloth. We all go through the same training. We all have similar abilities. And when you hear that one of your station mates wasn't able to do something, it makes you pause for a second and go, wow, what is it like out there?
9:14Steve Torpey:Right. And you had to wait for that first helicopter to come back before the next crew could take off. Why was that?
9:21Mike Corey:Well, we had never launched all three helicopters at once at night. And we only had two sets of night vision goggles. So I had to wait being the third aircraft for the first aircraft to come back and give me their goggles. And I remember getting into the aircraft and just waiting for them to arrive. And the first aircraft landed and there was an ambulance waiting as well. And that was surprising. I didn't expect that. And I didn't know why it was there. We were guessing.
9:52Steve Torpey:Because you had heard that they didn't get any of the survivors. So if there was no survivors in the actual aircraft, why is there an ambulance coming?
9:59Mike Corey:Yeah, that didn't make any sense. Then we heard that their flight mechanic, who was part of the crew, had passed out from heat exhaustion and was being transferred to the ambulance because he was unconscious and needed medical care. And that also just added to the anticipation that this is not going to be an easy night. What are the details that they give you about the conditions out there? So the pilot, Bill Attucks, was talking to me on the radio. So we didn't talk face to face. I was already in my helicopter and he was just shutting his helicopter down. And he told us that he had worked for several hours and it was really tough conditions.
10:36Mike Corey:The waves were enormous. I just remember hearing the exhaustion in his voice and the concern he had for me and our crew, knowing what he had just gone through. And then it was my turn to go out and see what I can do.
10:50Steve Torpey:And for the man who had heat exhaustion, I imagine that'd be quite difficult to get in Alaska at night. So what happened there?
10:59Mike Corey:Well, we're all wearing dry suits. So he's in a dry suit in an aircraft, even though he's got his head out into the winds, that's just ripping And the flight mechanic is the hoist operator. So he's got a control in his hand. He's holding onto the cable, trying to keep the cable and the basket under control. And he's also, they were also experienced another remarkable occurrence is that they came within six feet of the water. They had tried to hold a hundred foot hover thereabouts. And the flight mechanic later said he could see the wave come within six feet of the aircraft at one point. And I'm sure that stress added up with the heat exhaustion and just wiped them out.
11:37Mike Corey:Yeah.
11:38Steve Torpey:So stressful, to say the least. And as the new night vision goggles, the ones from the first chopper get transferred to your chopper, the third one, you head out. How are you feeling taking off, getting yourself into the thick of it all?
11:51Mike Corey:Well, one of the things that helped us a great deal is as the first aircraft was flying home, they recommended a few things we do. They said, take an extra flight mechanic, have an extra person on the aircraft. So instead of four, we had five people on board, take more smoke flares, take more chem lights, and take some sandbags because their basket, the first aircraft's basket was getting blown so severely by the wind. It was really hard to control. So the thought was they put a heavy sandbag in it. It might help control it. So we had gamed this out before we even got in the helicopter. You know, Captain Lefevre, myself, and Fred Kalt, our flight mechanic, Lee Honnold and Mike Fish all kind of gathered together real quick, kind of a pre-flight briefing.
12:35Mike Corey:And we talked about all the things we can do that were recommended by the first aircraft and anything else we could think of to try to put the odds more in our favor. The only thing we didn't discuss is which pilot was going to sit in which seat. Captain McFever was new to the air station. He is my boss. He is the CO, the commanding officer of the air station. Very unusual that we would have to call in the commanding officer to come fly, but we were out of pilots. So it was the captain and myself. So in Alaska, the two seats matter. The person in the right seat does the hoisting because that's the hoist is on the right side of the helicopter.
13:09Mike Corey:The person in the left seat does the navigation. Navigation is where Alaska demands the most of pilots. It is very difficult to navigate in Alaska. You cannot be wrong. If you're wrong, you'll hit a mountain and you'll die. So the left seat is very important. And typically the more experienced pilot would sit in the left seat because it's assumed that the person in the right seat would be perfectly capable of hoisting under any normal circumstances. But this case was different. I knew it right away. And I was walking out to the aircraft. I remember seeing the captain get into the right seat. And the right seat is where he traditionally had flown.
13:46Mike Corey:He's new to the air station and didn't have a lot of experience in that aircraft. So he was most comfortable in the right seat. And I just knew this case was going to be different. And I remember finishing my walk around and he's already strapped in and I, the door was open and I looked up at him and said, Captain, what do you think about the right seat? And he looked down at me and I didn't know what his response was going to be. I could just be fired at that point. I'm kicking him out of the seat. I mean, he, he basically owns the air station, but when we are together in the aircraft, I am the aircraft commander because I had the most experience, even though he's my boss.
14:20Mike Corey:So he looked down at me and graciously just unbuckled and said, Steve, I'd do the same thing if I were in your shoes. So he got out, got in the left seat, and now he's in the left seat, not a place he's very comfortable in, and I'm in the right seat. So the flying pilot in the right seat does most of the flying while we're hoisting because the flight mechanic is also on the right side of the aircraft looking out to the right.
14:42Steve Torpey:And just to clarify that, so the pilot's not doing the hoisting himself, but he has a better view of where the basket's going to go on the right side of the plane where the hoist is so he can navigate the plane so that the mechanic in the back can actually do a lot of the manual work of lowering the basket down and handling the survivors when they come up.
14:59Mike Corey:Yeah, it's very important to realize while we're hoisting the pilot in the right seat, there's a point at which he can't see what we're hoisting to anymore. So the hoist operator is the eyes for the pilot. So the pilot is basically blind. He can't see the target because it's beneath them. The only person that can see that is the flight mechanic. So it took another level of communication between Fred and I to get the helicopter over the place that we needed in order to get the basket where it needed to be.
15:39Steve Torpey:you and your crew took off from the coast guard base in sitka and began flying out into the storm to find the fishermen which is about 120 miles away around 15 minutes into the flight and alert went off.
15:53Mike Corey:What was it? Yeah, that was an interesting realization. I'm flying from Sitka to the location of the people in the water. The second aircraft was flying from the location where the people are in the water back to the air station. We are basically on the same flight path. In Alaska, you get very comfortable being the only aircraft out there. So when that alert and our aircraft went off that said there's another aircraft close by, it caught all of our attention And all of us went, what? And then we realized it's the other aircraft, our own aircraft coming the opposite direction. And I could see clearly their aircraft passing down my right side.
16:33Mike Corey:And that's when Dave Durham, the commander of that aircraft, started telling me what he just experienced. Which wasn't good. No, his voice was as shook up as I've ever heard. He was one of my mentors. He was one of the senior members of the air station. and hearing how exhausted and tired and how concerned he was about me, I'll never forget. I mean, he basically said, it's pretty bad out there. He said, just be careful. He knew what I was about to experience because he just did. And he had to make one of the most difficult decisions anybody has to make, as did the first aircraft, is that they were going to run out of gas if they stayed any longer.
Read the full transcript
17:10Mike Corey:So they had to come home and they had to leave knowing there's still people in the water.
17:15Steve Torpey:Yeah. And the flight was supposed to take about an hour, but how long did it actually take to get there? And when you got there, did you find the fishermen right away? Well, that was
17:23Mike Corey:kind of the other odd realization. 120 miles due west is where the people were. And that takes an hour because we fly 120 miles an hour, essentially. And we were there in just over 30 minutes. I had an 80-knot tailwind. So all of a sudden, we're here. And the needles that are pointing to where the location of the emergency beacons in the water are basically spun. Now, all of a sudden, we just passed them. And then we realized we've got to turn around. And we had somehow flown seven miles downwind of the scene. So at that point, we had to make our way back to the location of where the survivors were.
17:59Steve Torpey:Well, I think that that lends credence to how terrible the storm was, because you said there was 80 knot tailwinds. That's like 92 miles per hour winds blowing you. So I imagine it's not too difficult to get thrown a few miles off course when the storm is this bad.
18:16Mike Corey:Normally, in order to go from 300 feet down to 100 feet, where we will then be able to see the water and see the survivors, we do a controlled approach where we fly 70 knots and we just slowly descend down to 100 feet. And you do it while you're pointed into the wind. So I'm pointed at the wind and I'm flying at 70 knots, expecting to start to descend down to 100 feet. And I looked at this other instrument that's called a Doppler, and it tells me how fast I'm moving over the ground, not through the air, but over the ground. And it tells me I'm going backwards. And that is something I've never experienced before.
18:51Mike Corey:And it told me that the wind is much stronger than I had ever experienced. And I just had to basically speed up and fly forward and gradually creep up on the survivor's location, which we did. And I remember just laughing at that and mentioning it to Captain Lefevre. And we were both kind of chuckled about it and descended down to 100 feet where the needle pointed to. And I could see kind of a blurry mass of reflective tape on the back of the survivors' survival suits. You could never count the people. You couldn't see it that clearly. It was just a blurry mess of rain and wind and sea spray. And the people were moving substantially up and down, left and right, just rising on the these huge waves and then disappearing behind them and then appearing again.
19:39Mike Corey:And I could not see through all of the rain. The searchlight was also very difficult to use because if I pointed it forward, all I saw was this Star Wars light speed looking thing with all the snow and rain coming at me. Yeah. Like car headlights in a storm too. Yeah. It just, it was useless. So we kind of just got into a hover and started briefing on how we're going to attack this thing.
20:03Steve Torpey:And before you could attack this thing by lowering the rescue basket, you dropped flares in order to do something that's called station keeping. Can you explain that a bit to us today?
20:13Mike Corey:Sure. So the survivors are in front of me. I'm using them as a reference to tell me which end is up. Like walking into a completely black room and having one little pinpoint of light to give you reference. That's what it was like. So I needed to fly past the survivors and go upwind of them, drop the flares. And then my plan was just to simply back up. So the crew got ready to deploy the flares. And as soon as I got over the survivors, they went underneath me. I lost track of them. and I looked up and I couldn't see a thing. I had no idea which end was up. My stomach just knotted up and I was like, oh, I am over my head right now.
20:50Mike Corey:So I literally counted two Mississippis. I said it in my head and I said, drop, drop, drop. They threw the flares out the door and that's when things went sideways. I must've pulled back too much or a wind gust caught. I don't know what happened, but the aircraft's nose was 30 degrees nose up. I'm going backwards at over 40 knots. I have no idea what's behind me. And I'm crashing through 100 feet, going down. And I remember recovering at 30 feet while I'm still going backwards. And my fear was I was going to back into a wave. And everybody is screaming. I went from 30 degrees nose up to 30 degrees nose down, a 60 degree pitch change.
21:29Mike Corey:I've never done that before in this aircraft. And I remember just pulling up the collective. And prior to getting out there, Captain Lefevre and I had agreed that he's going to help me with the collective. We rarely share the controls, but in this case, he was going to help me negotiate the wave heights by adding power with the collective, having us climb up to clear the waves. So as we were crashing, I felt him pulling up on the collective. And I remember looking up at the torque of the aircraft, and that's basically how much power we're pulling. And I remember seeing 130%. Our limit was 127.
22:09Mike Corey:I honestly only got a glimpse of it because I also was looking at our altimeter, which was telling us we're at 30 feet. And I remember thinking initially, we can't break the helicopter. I don't want to pull that much power. And then realizing I'm fighting the captain a little bit. And then my next recollection was he's right. We need to not die right now. So what happened is we recovered and then started climbing up and we got back up to 100 feet. And we had to take a minute just to kind of recenter ourselves. But at that point, I could see the survivors. We had smoke flares in the water. And I said, the corniest thing I've ever said is, all right, guys, let's get to work.
22:46Mike Corey:And I remember thinking, oh, that sounded really dumb.
22:50Steve Torpey:Can we clarify a few things? So you were saying that you and Kaplan of Fever were flying the helicopter in a sort of unusual way where you both had hands on the controls and you were helping each other. You mentioned something called the collective. Can you just elaborate on what that is?
23:03Mike Corey:Yeah, the collective is a lever that's in your left hand. and it goes up and down and it basically changes the power on the aircraft. It changes the pitch of the rotor blades and it makes you go basically up and down. And it's part of the pilot duties to manage the collective, the cyclic, which is the stick and then the pedals and sharing controls is unusual, but we had to do it. I was looking out to my right almost all night. Captain Cleaver was looking forward at the waves that were sometimes going above us. You know, the smoke flares would actually rise above our helicopter. And Captain would go, there's a big one coming.
23:39Mike Corey:And he would pull on the collective and initiate the climb to ensure we didn't like fly right into the front side of a wave.
23:46Steve Torpey:That's incredible to even picture. It's just the cinema of this chaotic scene, chopper rattling away with the blades, flares in this milky ocean with the snow and the rain just rising above. And then you guys having to work together and trust each other 100 % on both sets of controls to be able to get this basket to the right point, but also not be engulfed by the waves that you can see with these smoky flares rising above the cockpit window. That is an incredible visual.
24:15Mike Corey:And we were trying to hold 100 feet. It just begs the question. There's no measuring stick out there, but those waves sometimes were bigger than us.
24:22Steve Torpey:That's incredible to think about. Wow. Okay. So the flares were in the water and now was the time to start dropping the basket. I imagine in this scenario with the vertical movement of the waves and the horizontal pushing of the ocean, that must have been quite the struggle to be able to get over them directly.
24:42Mike Corey:It was. And it was a learning experience for both Fred and I. I was moving the cyclic, the stick, more than I've ever moved it before in my life. And I can remember seeing the rotors go up and down more than I've ever seen them. I beat the hell out of the helicopter.
24:57Steve Torpey:And these fishermen in the water, how long had they been there at this point?
25:01Mike Corey:God, hours, five hours or so. I don't know exactly when their boat capsized, but it was long enough for the boat to capsize for their emergency beacon to get set off. That alerted the Coast Guard that told the air station to go launch and then have two helicopters come out. So it was hours.
25:18Steve Torpey:And that's pushing the edge of what humans are able to do in water that is so close to freezing. It was a 38 Fahrenheit or something like that. So these men, you knew were going to be in dire shape if you could get a hold of one of them.
25:30Mike Corey:It wasn't just that it was cold. It was that they were in a washing machine. Yeah. They were going up and down these waves, getting tumbled all the time. They did some really, really smart things, though. They stayed together as much as they could. We didn't know how many people were on the boat, but we could see four or five people down there. So we were just focused on them.
25:48Steve Torpey:When you finally got a hold of one of the fishermen and brought him up in the basket, how did it feel to have one man in the chopper after such incredible difficulty?
25:59Mike Corey:Yeah, it probably took 20 minutes just to get the basket close. And Fred did a marvelous job. Fred and Lee were both in the cabin trying to get that basket timing right. I started noticing that the distances are getting smaller and smaller. Then I heard hold and I was like, cool. So we got the basket near the survivors. and Fred said, there's someone in the basket. And he started hoisting the person up. And wow, I was thrilled. I mean, I don't know how to describe that feeling. I mean, the guy's coming up. And then he got into the aircraft. They brought him in. And I looked back and I could see him.
26:32Mike Corey:I was like, we just got him. We're going to get all of them. I absolutely knew we're going to get all these people now. So once the basket came in, the person got out of the basket. We started for the second hoist.
26:56Steve Torpey:you're flying the helicopter in this terrible storm you're hovering over the stranded fishermen you've already managed to rescue one of them and you're sending this basket back down a second time but this time things didn't go as well as the first tell us a bit about that
27:15Mike Corey:Well, we started the second hoist and we're all kind of on a high. We got it down. That second hoist probably took about 10 or 12 minutes or so. And then that's when it got a little bit different. The sea state got a little bit worse. Fred was having a hard time seeing the survivors. The sea spray, the wind was blowing so hard that he couldn't, we're at 100 feet. He couldn't see the survivors well enough to distinguish them. And the basket is near them. And he said, basically, hold, hold. And I'm holding there. And bear in mind, I still can't see the survivors. I'm just holding based on the ocean.
27:53Mike Corey:And then he said, I think someone's in the basket. And it was a, I don't know, maybe a minute. And they started pulling the basket up. And there was an awkward silence. And I remember just like waiting for the next piece of information that Fred to give me to tell me things are all right. And as the basket came up, bear in mind, the wind's blowing so hard, The basket's not coming straight up. It's coming from behind the helicopter. It's like 45 degrees being blown behind us. So it's coming up at a very awkward angle. So as it comes up, I could just hear the confusion in Fred's voice about what's happening.
28:29Mike Corey:And then Mike Fish, our rescue swimmer, poked his head out the door and could see that there was someone in the basket, but there was also someone hanging on the outside of the basket. There were two people coming up. and it wasn't long after that that uh sorry it's okay i can't get through this point without remembering how i felt yeah i imagine it was very difficult the basket was close to the aircraft and mike said the person on the outside of the basket just fell and i instantly looked at my radar altimeter and it said 103 feet and i knew you can't survive that fall not in that ocean and we continued with the recovery, got the person in the basket in the aircraft, and I backed up and I could see the person had fallen in the water.
29:21Mike Corey:I could see him and he was in front of me and he was floating flat and he wasn't moving. And I knew he was dead and I had just lost him.
29:34Steve Torpey:And I imagine that changed the attitude of the rescue from success having one and two people, but then having one, unfortunately, fall.
29:45Mike Corey:Oh, it's agony.
29:47Steve Torpey:Yeah. I have never felt so deflated and so just, I didn't know how to recover from it.
29:53Mike Corey:I didn't have time to think about that, but I remember looking down and trying to be as objective as I could and seeing him. And then we began concentrating on the next order of business, which was to get the third person.
30:06Steve Torpey:Your co-pilot, Ted Lefevre, bought everyone some more time on scene by arranging a return to a closer base in Yakutat. And this allowed you more time to work on the third fisherman. What decisions did you have to make at that moment?
30:20Mike Corey:Well, I remember, first off, hearing Captain Lefevre said, if we recover in Yakutat, we can spend another 45 minutes on scene. And I remember thinking, I don't really want to do that. I'm starting to get really tired. My concentration is starting to ebb a little bit, but it gave me a little bit more of a sense that we can continue trying to get the third person. So we had a choice. Do we try to spend time on recovering the person that had just fallen? Or do we try to get the other person? And the logical choice was to get the person that's still part of the survivor pack. We elected to do that.
30:55Mike Corey:And we started that third hoist. And ultimately, we got the third person aboard. Mike Fish had also volunteered multiple times to go deploy into the water.
31:06Steve Torpey:And Mike Fish, the rescue swimmer, wanted to go in to try and save Mark Morley, who was the one who fell from the basket.
31:13Mike Corey:We did try to recover him using the basket. We actually got very, very close to putting the basket right on top of him, but there was no movement. There was no effort from him to get into the basket. And after 5 or 10 or 15 minutes of trying to do that, Captain Lefevre, rightfully so, looked at the crew and said, it's time for us to go home. There's nothing else for us to do. He saw me starting to slow down. He could tell Fred was getting tired. So it was time to basically depart scene and go to Yakutat and land. And how was that flight back to Yakutat? What was the scene like when you got there?
31:51Mike Corey:Well, I remember transferring the controls over to the captain because I was too tired to fly. And my job was just to basically navigate us from point A to point B. It was very quiet. Nobody in the aircraft was really talking. We were up front flying to a small little airport. In January, nobody really uses that airport. It's mostly a hunting and fishing location. So we landed and there wasn't much there other than an ambulance. And a crew took the survivors, brought them into the ambulance and they disappeared. They went off to the hospital and that was it. they were gone. And we started doing the post-flight inspection just to kind of look at things and see how things go.
32:33Mike Corey:And I remember looking at the aircraft and seeing a piece of it broken off. And it was the antenna, our HF antenna, high-frequency antenna was broken. And I asked Fred, hey, how did that happen? He goes, the last guy that we recovered had a buoy ball tied to him. And that buoy ball was about three or four feet in diameter. And it was flailing around in the wind while he was in the basket. And when it came up, that ball hit the side of the aircraft and broke off that antenna. If it had touched the tail rotor, even by a fraction of an inch, it would have destroyed the tail rotor and we would have instantly had to crash in the ocean.
33:14Mike Corey:We would not be here.
33:16Steve Torpey:Jeez, man. So you get back and it's what, 3, 4 a.m.? Can some boys get a beer at this time of day in Alaska or what?
33:25Mike Corey:Oh, under normal circumstances, it would have been an absolute yes, but we're all too tired. And I knew we had to fly home the next day. And if we have anything to drink, we're going to completely delay that return. So we elected not to have any beer. It was almost a unanimous decision. But we're sitting in the lobby of this Alaska hotel, bar, restaurant thing that basically had one sign on it. It said beer, food, and lodging. That's all. It didn't even have a name. It just said beer, food, and lodging. Perfect. That's all you need. But the lodging was all shut off. It was 50 degrees in the rooms.
33:59Mike Corey:Captain Lefevre and I stayed in one room and the other guys stayed in a thing in a different room. And there's no way I had to go to sleep. I was still wired from that whole event. So we stayed there for two or three hours. And then I think all of us kind of woke up and just wandered out back into the lobby and sat around and just trying to figure out what we're going to do next.
34:18Steve Torpey:After this event happened, was there any talk amongst the crew? How did you guys deal with Mark Morley, who fell?
34:25Mike Corey:I think there's several stages people go through. And after the case, we all talked about it. You debriefed ourselves. We were debriefed by the Coast Guard. We all understand that there are times where we can't save everyone. And knowing that we did save three people that night was very comforting. We take this job because we want to save everyone. And sometimes you just can't. And that takes some real introspection to make sure that you understand that and that it's a dangerous world. So we talked about the techniques we used. We talked about what could we have done differently. And there's really nothing that I think we could have put in place that would have made the outcome any different.
35:07Mike Corey:So I think all of us are comforted by that, but I think all of us also recognize that this is both a Coast Guard success as well as a tragedy. And we just have to find ways to deal with it.
35:20Steve Torpey:Did you ever see the fishermen you rescued again?
35:23Mike Corey:The only time we saw them was about a month or so later when we did the investigation. Whenever there's a maritime death, the Coast Guard does a marine investigation, and they have a hearing. And the hearing was in Sitka, and we went, and my crew was there. The survivors were there, and the fiancé of the captain that had fallen, Mark Morley, was also there. That's when I learned that she was also four months pregnant with their first child. And I did want to speak to her specifically during my hearing testimony because I wanted to know how her husband or her fiancé had passed away. I wanted her to understand that we did everything we possibly could, and nature was just bigger than us that night.
36:07Steve Torpey:Yeah, and I just want to say thank you for sharing that story and just letting us know how it felt. So I just want to say thank you for that. It actually helps talking about it, to be honest. Steve Torpy, thank you so much for sharing your story with us today on Against the Odds. My pleasure. Thank you very much.
36:34Steve Torpey:Follow Against the Odds on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of Against the Odds ad-free by joining Audible.
36:56Steve Torpey:Produced by Audible, I'm your host, Mike Corey. Polly Stryker produced this episode. Engineered by Sergio Enriquez. Original theme music by Scott Velasquez and 2K for Fries on Sync. Series produced by Emily Frost. Managing producer, Desi Blaylock. Senior producers, Andy Herman and Austin Rackless. Executive producer for Audible, Jenny Lauer-Beckman. Head of Audible Originals North America, Marshall Louis. Chief Content Officer Rachel Giazza Sound Recording Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals, LLC
From the publisher
When Coast Guard pilot Steve Torpey got called into work on a Friday night back in January, 1998, he had no idea he was heading into the most challenging flight of his career. At that point, two Coast Guard helicopters had already failed to rescue the crew of the sunken fishing vessel La Conte. Torpey’s crew — manning the third helicopter — were the stranded fishermen’s last hope. Now retired, Steve Torpey joins host Mike Corey to share his memories of that fateful rescue mission.
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