Four men were flying from Arizona to Mexico over the Sea of Cortez
when they encountered a massive thunderstorm.
Just as they turned around to exit the storm, their plane stalled,
sending them into the stormy waters below.
And this would just be the beginning of their ordeal.
[music]
On Friday, September 15th, 1997,
two childhood friends, Jim Hawley and Jens Lundy, arrived at the Falcon Field Airport in Arizona
for an exciting father-son fishing trip.
Not only had they planned to do some fishing on the rich Gulf Coast of Mexico,
but their hope was that this trip would allow them to reconnect
with their fathers, John Hawley and Bill Lundy.
In particular, Jens' relationship with his father had become more and more distant over time
to the point that they hadn't even seen each other in years.
In the past couple of years as well, Jim had taken up flying and had logged over 200 hours of flight time
and so they thought it would be cool for him to fly everyone there in a rented plane.
After Jim completed his pre-flight check at the plane,
they loaded up their gear into the storage compartments and then set off to Mexico.
They expected a roughly three-and-a-half-hour flight down to Loreto on the east coast of Baja.
From Loreto, they would take a boat into the beautiful Sea of Cortez, which is just teeming with sealife.
After getting up to their cruising altitude at 9,500 feet (2,895.6 m),
Jens put in some earbuds and went to sleep while the others enjoyed the view from the plane
as they traveled over the ocean through clear, sunny skies.
About 30 minutes from touchdown, still about 50 miles (80.47 km) out from Loreto Airport,
Jim got a report of some light winds and reduced visibility to about 20 miles (32.2 km).
Eventually, the clouds that had been reported came into view,
but they didn't look all that bad, so Jim planned to start his descent through the clouds at 30 miles (48.3 km) out.
Almost immediately, the group realized that the clouds were getting way darker
and the weather was much worse than it had looked just a few minutes ago.
Then, the plane started to shake violently as the wind picked up
and rain started hitting the windscreen.
He checked his speed and saw that the GPS at 115 miles (185.1 km) per hour
whereas his air speed indicator was 160 miles (257.5 km) per hour,
meaning he was traveling into a really strong headwind.
Finally, after a few flashes of lightning, Jim knew that he had to turn around,
and so he banked the plane, turned it 180 degrees,
and descended down and out of the storm to clear, sunny skies once again.
He radioed the Loreto Tower about this change
and told them he'd either find an alternate airport to land at
or just go around the storm if conditions were still good at the airport.
After clearing the clouds, Jim pushed the throttle down to full power
and started to climb back up to cruising altitude for their new course.
About 30 seconds later, at 1,500 feet, the engines started to sputter and cough,
and then it just died.
Jim lowered the nose to a smooth glide and then started his Engine Out Procedure
to try to restart the engine, but he couldn't get the engine to start again.
He knew that the only choice now was to land in the ocean,
but with them now traveling away from the storm, there was a strong tailwind.
The additional 40 miles (64.4 km) per hour would make the impact much more serious and potentially, even deadly.
So he turned the plane back around toward the storm and towards the shore.
He then told his dad to unlatch and open the door of the plane as they got closer and closer to the water.
Jens unbuckled a seatbelt and reached back for all the life vests in the storage compartment
and then handed one to Bill and John, and then kept one for himself and Jim.
Getting closer and closer to the ground, Jim was frantically trying to radio the tower,
but there was so much radio traffic he couldn't get through to them.
Finally, there was a brief lull and he was able to give a mayday call with his estimated position.
Unfortunately, his GPS had been knocked around in the turbulence and so he couldn't give the exact position.
After relaying the information, there was no time for a response
because they were just 150 feet (45.7 m) up from the water now.
They were also back into the storm, and so they could barely see in front of them -
only straight down into the massive dark waves swirling beneath them.
Everyone braced for impact, Jim put the plane in reverse at the last second before they hit the water,
and then the plane skipped across the tops of some waves before eventually smashing nose-down into the water.
Between the headwind and the slow air speed, the impact was actually surprisingly small.
Everyone was essentially completely unharmed as the plane bogged back up to the surface.
But now, they need to get out of the plane as quickly as possible
before it sunk under the dark, stormy water.
John was the first one to step out of the plane onto the wing
and see the storm abyss that they'd be getting into in a minute.
Although it was mid-afternoon, it could very well have been nighttime
because of how dark it was in the storm.
Jens helped his dad out of the plane next and Jim followed after that.
Jens then handed Jim the final life vest
as they all stood in the wing of the plane, bobbing up and down in the waves.
After standing there for a second, they realized they need to grab
anything they could from the plane before it disappeared in the water.
They grabbed a small duffel bag, some of the fishing rods, and a plastic ice chest.
They figured that if they were out there long enough, the fishing rods might come in handy to catch food.
After grabbing the stuff, Jens and his father, Bill, were the first to step into the dark, stormy water.
Jim and his father, John, were thrown into the water a second later
as the plane tipped nose-down into the water.
With the tail sticking straight up in the air now,
the group of men watched as the lights of the plane slowly drifted deeper
and deeper into the stormy water until they were no longer visible.
The two older men held onto the ice chest as 10-foot (3.05 m) waves crashed over the group.
The waves were coming so quickly and crashing over them so frequently
that John was inadvertently swallowing tons of seawater.
Eventually, he started throwing up violently from ingesting so much of the saltwater
and the waves continued to crash over them.
All the while, lightning was exploding around them,
and they were just hoping that none of the strikes hit close to where they were
or they would've gotten electrocuted.
The salt in the water actually makes seawater more conductive than freshwater.
Meaning that a lightning strike anywhere near them would travel and kill them for sure.
The men also struggled to keep their heads above the water
because the vest that they had brought for their flight were really poor-quality.
Jim was under the false assumption that they were required for the type of plane they were flying,
so he asked Jens to pick up some cheap ones, thinking that they could return them after the trip.
The older men held onto the ice chest to help them stay afloat,
and eventually, Jim and Jens put on some flippers that had been stored in the ice chest.
This would help them swim around, but didn't make floating in one spot much easier.
Now, all they could do was wait and hope that the mayday call had gone through
and someone would come to rescue them.
About two hours later, the storm had started to let up a little bit
and visibility improved to about five miles (8.05 km).
The waves were still big, but they weren't constantly crashing over them like they were before.
Then, in the distance, they heard the unmistakable sound of a low-flying helicopter.
Jim would later say that this was the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard,
and everyone was super relieved that they'd be saved but the helicopter never even got close to them.
In the distance, they could see it flying back and forth, but either because of how much they drifted
or because of the incorrect position Jim had estimated,
they were too far away to spot them in the water.
The group waved their arms and yelled, but after 15 or 20 minutes,
the helicopter disappeared into the horizon from where it came.
This was obviously incredibly discouraging for the group
because they had no idea whether or not they would actually come back to search for them once the weather improved.
At around 7:30, four hours after landing in the water,
Jim and Jens started discussing their options.
They swam away from the ice chest so they couldn't be heard by the older men
and agreed that one of them should try to swim for land.
Now that the storm had passed, they could see land off in the distance,
but it was too far to actually see the shore.
Jens was the stronger swimmer, and so he volunteered to go
and then he and Jim switched flippers so that he would have the good pair.
Then, he took off swimming, trying to distance himself before his dad noticed what he was doing.
Jim then swam back to the ice chest and broke the news to Bill and John.
Bill was furious at first, but eventually accepted that there was nothing he could do.
Jens was already gone.
As the sun set, the temperature started to get colder.
Although the water was very warm, the air and mist coming off of the water started to chill the men.
The three men sat there holding onto the ice chest as the darkness slowly crept in.
Thankfully, John had stopped vomiting and was looking and feeling better in the calmer water.
Miles away now, Jens swam steadily to the shore.
He alternated between swimming on his back and swimming on his stomach to conserve energy
and tried not to think about the group holding onto the ice chest.
When he left, John was in such rough shape
that he wasn't sure if he was actually going to survive the night.
Eventually, Jens was so tired and so thirsty
that he had to stop and take long breaks, sitting on the life jacket to rest.
He would actually doze off while sitting on the life jacket
and only woke up when he tipped over and his head went under the water.
By the end, he was managing to take only a few strokes at a time,
as he slowly made his way to shore.
Back at the ice chest, the three men talked on and off,
trying to keep their spirits up as they waited for rescue.
They also tried to swim slowly towards the shore so that they could fight the current
slowly pulling them further out to sea.
Then, around midnight, the three men heard a bout off in the distance,
and then they saw its search light getting closer and closer.
Again, they yelled and whistled and tried to get the attention of the boat,
but after moving back and forth across the sea for a while,
the boat eventually disappeared into the distance as well.
Eventually, as the nighttime temperatures cooled the water's surface, Jim started to get hypothermic.
At around 1:30, as Jens continued to make his way toward the shore,
he started to hear a faint noise off in the distance.
He couldn't quite make out what it was, and so he kept swimming
and the noise got louder and louder until he thought that what he was hearing
was the sound of waves crashing along the shore.
This was kind of true. What he didn't realize that he was getting close to the shore,
but there was a series of coral reefs in between him and the actual shore.
The sound he was hearing was the water crashing along the jagged reef
that extended hundreds of feet from the dry land.
After swimming for another little while longer, Jens smashed his knee off of the reef,
cutting open his knee in the process.
He went to stand on it and it was covered in sea urchins that went right through his swim fins.
He then fell over from the pain and got sea urchins all over his hands.
Now bleeding and covered in sea urchins, he came to the horrifying realization
that if he kept going forward, the waves would smash him against the jagged rocks of the reefs,
and he was now bleeding in shark-infested water.
Even worse, he obviously couldn't keep going forward through the reef,
so he would need to swim back away and then go along the coastline to an area where it opened up.
Exhausted, Jens backed away from the reef and made his way along the coast to try to find an opening.
Miraculously, a little while later, he actually saw a light on the shore.
Without even thinking about the reef, he immediately swam straightforward
and managed to make it through the still very dangerous reef with little issue.
As he got close to the shore, he yelled for help and the light suddenly went out.
He kept swimming towards the shore and was able to put his feet down,
but it wasn't a nice sandy beach.
It was a rough, rocky beach that was lined with shells and sea urchins,
and he eventually had to crawl in the water to make it all the way to dry land.
Upon reaching the land, the two men came out from hiding after realizing that Jens was not a threat.
These were actually Mexican fishermen who had made camp there that night.
The light he had seen was their fire. In that area, drug smugglers sometimes come ashore,
and the men were worried about encountering somebody armed and dangerous.
Finally, at 2:30 AM, after seven hours of swimming, Jens was safe on dry land.
Now, he had to figure out a way to help the other three men still in the water.
The fishermen helped Jens to their fire where they gave him a blanket, food, and water.
Unfortunately, they didn't speak any English and Jens didn't speak any Spanish,
and so it was difficult to communicate to them what had happened.
Eventually, they managed to get across. They couldn't do anything that night, still.
They had to wait until morning to boat out of there.
Otherwise, they risked smashing their boat along the reefs in the dark.
Jens spent a little bit of time pulling sea urchin spines out of his feet and then fell asleep.
Back in the water at around 6:00 AM,
Jim figured that if rescuers were going to continue the search, they would probably start soon.
As the sun rose in the sky, the temperature started to rise,
and the men started getting hopeful about their chances of rescue.
Then, a couple of hours went by and there was still no sign of rescue,
and so the men started to realize they might have to save themselves.
With their mouths bone-dry, their tongue shriveled, and their lips white from dehydration,
they made the tough decision to let go of the ice chest and start swimming to shore.
In their weakened state, they weren't even sure
if they would make it to shore before succumbing to dehydration.
Jens woke up just before dawn and the fishermen took him about a mile down the coast in their boat.
They stopped briefly at an old, dilapidated house,
and they were greeted by an old man who spoke excellent English.
Not only that, he had heard about the plane crash, and so he knew about Jens' situation.
They communicated this with the other men and then they took him into the nearest town.
In the town, Jens found some police who took him to the police station
and then gave a full account of the events.
He told him approximately how far out they were
and the course of the plane based on what he had heard Jim say.
The police then dispatched an Army helicopter to search for the three remaining men.
Jens was taken to the hospital shortly after that
where he would actually hear the rescue helicopter pass overhead.
At about 10:00 AM, when the group of three was about five miles from the land,
the shoreline slowly appeared into view.
Then, they heard the distant rumble of a helicopter once again.
This time, it came closer and closer and passed right over them,
and then turned around and went back towards the land.
They figured it had to have seen them this time because otherwise,
it would've searched around a little bit before going back.
With that said, after all that they had gone through,
they waited anxiously, doubting whether or not the helicopter had actually seen them.
Thankfully, 15 minutes later, off in the distance, they could see the big black plume of smoke
as a large Mexican naval vessel sped towards them.
It arrived after about 30 minutes and a small boat was dropped down into the water.
The men were pulled onto the small boat,
and after 19 hours of being stranded in the Sea of Cortez, they finally stood on dry land.
As with the fishermen, the officers on this boat barely spoke any English,
but Jim knew just enough Spanish to inquire about the fate of his good friend, Jens.
They reassured him that Jens was alive and well, and was in fact the one who had sent them.
They arrived back at the port to cheers and applause,
and found out that they were the only people
to have ever been successfully saved after getting stranded in that area.
Jim was the first off of the boat and hugged Jens who was waiting there.
Jens' heroic effort to swim to shore saved the other three men.
And although the fishing trip was unsuccessful,
the ordeal would ultimately bring Jens and his father closer together.
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