Our plane crash in the cold Atlantic ocean and people say I haven't been the same since! 

It was a Flying Tigers' Lockheed Super Constellation, a four engine turbo prop with a very distinctive tail with three vertical fins. They called it "Flying Tiger Flight 923" from the USA to Germany. The airline was the civilian successor to the original Flying Tigers fighting team of World War II fame. 

The incident was supposed to be a controlled and orderly ditching operation. "Routine" is the term they used, but it didn't turn out according to plan. We hit a furious and unforgiving mountain of water, belly first, at about a hundred miles an hour. At that point all bets were off. Orderliness and routine went out the window. The plane broke apart and by time it was over, 28 people were dead. It's a wonder any of us lived. 

It happened at night during a very heavy wind storm in the month of September, which to our good fortune happens to be the warmest month of the year in that part of the ocean. We had 76 people on board. Most of them were Army paratroopers, who were my brothers in training, plus the seven members of the aircraft crew, and some 20 women and children passengers. None of the children survived. 

Fifty one of us made it to the lone 25 man life raft, but only 48 survived the ride. We only had one life raft because the right wing broke off on impact and that carried two rafts. Two more from the left wing were blown out of reach. Only the life raft that was inside the plane carried survivors.  It was some 500 miles west of Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula, somewhere southeast of Iceland. No chance for swimmers! No islands. Only the wind-swept, icy ocean. 

The night was a long, dramatic deliverance for those of us who lived. There were six frigid and dizzying hours in a tiny, over-crowded life raft, that by fate had inflated upside down so the rescue lights were invisible from above. The wind blew the craft some 22 miles from the point of impact to the point of rescue. 

There was a rescue ship of Swiss origin, a freighter named the "The Celerina." There was the exuberance of being snatched from the sea by the freighter's crew, followed by two turbulent days of tossing and pitching at sea aboard the ship. Once the storm cleared, for a few of us, there was a dramatic and glorious helicopter ride over the most beautiful and glorious green fields in the world!

It was our deliverance to safety.  A glorious day and a glorious rescue. 

The landscape! The seascape! The sunshine! The people! Even the roar and the rattle of the helicopter! They were all glorious that day, not just pretty or beautiful. It was breath-taking! Overwhelming! Glorious! My first view of Ireland! 

That was when I was blessed with a destiny to become O’Caruso -- Frederick O’Caruso that is -- the "Born Again Irishman."  I didn't realize it at the time. No bells or flashing lights. None-the-less, it happened to me! The Italian boy from the suburbs of New York was touched and headed toward a journey leading to Irish citizenship and a home on the magical Emerald Isle. 

 Just a Routine Passage

It was a Flying Tiger passenger plane enroute to Frankfurt, Germany. It was a civilian craft chartered by the Army to shuttle troops to Europe for another Berlin crisis in the early 1960s.  Besides paratroopers, the aircraft carried military dependents, women and children, and the civilian aircraft captain's wife, who died before the ordeal ended. 

Our flight, from MacGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, seemed to be going smoothly until we hit bad weather at 10,000 feet above the sea some 10 hours into the trip. We were about at the mid-way point, too far to turn back.  The captain  decided to take us up to 21,000 feet to be above the clouds. The Super Constellation was a propeller driven aircraft, four engines, with a very distinctive triple tail fin. It was known as a work horse for one of the most rugged and tested cargo transport airlines in the world, The Flying Tigers. We were the cargo. 

It took tremendous power to get that old prop plane up to 21,000 feet. It probably wasn't much by today's standards, but at the time this plane was pretty powerful. A four-engine baby with super turbo-charged engines. We made our combat practice jumps from much smaller aircraft. This one seemed awesome in comparison. 

We were told over the loud-speakers that the engines were going to be shifted into super-charge; that there would be a quieting of the engine roar and a change of pitch in the engine roar when the super-chargers were working. This was a normal operation, the pilot told us, and the changing sounds were to be expected. The super-chargers kicked in and we slowly started to climb. 

I  had never been so high and I was having a hard time comprehending my location above the earth. Our flights in jump school were at very low altitude, usually not more than 1,200 feet and sometimes at a lot less. 

We were almost four miles above the water, yet, from my seat against the window just above  the right wing, I could see the white caps on the waves below.  They were mighty big waves! The sun was setting deep on the horizon behind us and we were flying into the darkness. Europe was somewhere ahead.  The ocean looked so enormous, so cold and so desolate.  The view gave me the chills. I was awestruck and I couldn't take my eyes from the window.  We had to sit with our seat belts fastened because of the turbulence outside.

 Fire in the Sky

The blue exhaust flames from the aircraft engines grew more distinct as the skies became darker. The flames fascinated me.  They were almost hypnotic against the eerie background of the endless, restless ocean. 

Then, with heart jolting suddenness, the spell was broken.  First came a rush of

orange sparks shooting out of the exhaust pipes. Then the engine I was sitting against burst into flames. I sat there staring into the flames in silent horror. 

The fire went out within a few minutes but that engine was now silent and motionless.  I noticed a few minutes later that an engine on the left wing was silent too. I could see it from across the isle. I assumed that it had been shut off to balance the plane. 

We were told by the stewardesses not to worry; that two motors were all that were needed to get us to our alternate destination, Shannon, Ireland.  "As a precaution," we started to prepare for ditching. 

"Just a drill," the stewardesses kept reminding us, but I knew it wasn't. We were "buying the farm," as pilots say. We were done. Finished. A very short career, Private Caruso. 

I started to write a letter home to say "thank you and farewell," as if the letter would ever get there. I was scared, but I wasn't going to show it. I was a paratrooper, one of the world's toughest, and I didn't show it, at least not to anyone less scared than me. But I did write a letter of farewell, just in case. 

Step by step, little-by-little, we went through the ditching procedure. It was spread over a couple of hours. Our drill continued with each new step as the situation grew more and more hopeless. It was during the long pauses in our drill that I found time to finish my letter. 

As the situation worsened, we dropped altitude and found ourselves chugging along at only 200 feet above the waves. Everyone was in their life vests and stripped of all sharp medals and jewelry. Then to make our drill just a little more realistic, we were told to take our shoes off. We paratroopers didn't like that idea. Our spit-shined jump boots were our identity, but everyone was too nervous to complain.  A stewardess collected our footwear and locked it up in a toilet room up front to keep it all from flying around when we ditched. 

There we sat in our life vests and in stocking feet, waiting for what might come next.  I put the letter to my folks in my shirt pocket, after carefully writing on the envelope, "If recovered, please deliver to my parents at ..." I assumed there would be a recovery operation. 

The Army major sitting to my left and I decided that if we should finally ditch, it would be awfully cold out there, so we helped each other in putting on our wool uniform jackets under the life vests.  

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