Entire Crew Asleep - 1957

According to my very thick and totally accurate log book, this story begins on 7 July 1957.

One of the P5M’s from VP-45 had flown from Bermuda to Corpus Christi for some official reason that escapes me and, upon arrival, had gone AOCP (Aircraft Out of Commission for Parts) because the APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) was down. There was not a spare anywhere near Corpus Christi and the squadron was approaching its competitive evaluation by the Fleet Air Wing, so every aircraft was needed in the best possible condition.

The very next day, 8 July, a squadron plane at our home base in Bermuda was loaded with a spare APU and the maintenance personnel needed to install it.  Also aboard was a CPO passenger who had squadron business in JAX. I was the PPC scheduled to take the replacement APU to Corpus Christi and Dave Johnson was the co-pilot.  We also had an enroute stop in JAX to drop off the CPO and we were going to pick him  up again on the way back to BDA.   All went as planned until we arrived at Corpus Christi at about 2230 hours local. The crew was pretty tired, having logged over 12 hours in the air plus the delay in JAX, so I called the squadron from Corpus and requested permission for an RO1N (Remain Over One Night).

The prompt reply was "Negative. Return immediately!" So, we gassed up and took off about 2400, arriving at JAX, for the CPO pickup, at zero-dark-thirty on 9 July - after another 5.9 hours of flight.  

A phone call search for the CPO resulted in the information from Base Ops that he had secured a hop to Norfolk on his own and had already departed.  Crap!  Had we known that, we could have skipped the JAX stop and saved a couple hours of enroute time. Again we gassed up with a bone tired crew and took off for BDA a couple hours or so after sunrise.

The sky was cloudless for the most part and the autopilot was operating with its usual excellent performance. The Navigator had programmed our overwater flight all the way and Radio made the first two position reports. Then that's where the story gets really interesting.

NAV went to sleep and so did the rest of the crew. The sun had warmed up the cockpit so both pilots unknowingly dozed off while "Iron Mike" (the autopilot) flew us on our way. For some unknown reason I awoke some time later and drowsily looked out the front of the aircraft and, Lo and Behold, there was Bermuda right on the nose about five miles dead ahead. No one answered my intercom call, so I punched Dave awake, hit the emergency bell to wake everyone else up and began the descent to landing at homeplate.  

I have flown that mission time and time again in my head and wondered what would have happened had I not awakened until after we had overflown Bermuda for a couple of hours - or if the autopilot had malfunctioned.  In that two day period, we had spent 24.8 hours in the air with two stops in JAX and another in Corpus Christi.  The other aircraft, with the broken APU, DID get to RON in Corpus and arrived later on 9 July….the same day we did.

 As I recall, we didn't even get an "Attaboy".

Submitted by Charlie Caldwell (VP-45 '54 - '57)