Dan's Papers - May 22, 2009 - 106th OF WESTHAMPTON AT THE SHUTTLE LAUNCH

Everyone in the Hamptons is familiar with the lumbering four engine propeller planes that circle around a few thousand feet above the beaches and old windmills of this place every once in a while. Newcomers are correctly told that these are C-130 cargo planes and they are up in the skies for training purposes from their base at Gabreski Airport in Westhampton. But often it is thought the training is for the pilots, who it is believed are learning how to handle these giant aircraft when, in fact, it is really about the crews that man them.

The three C-130s and the 100 men who are part of the operation at Westhampton, along with their helicopters and other gear, are actually among the most rigorously and highly trained people in the United States military. They learn air to sea rescue and air to land rescue in what is often the worst weather and sea conditions imaginable. It was they who were aloft in choppers, rappelling down ropes to the water to rescue the crew of a sinking freighter years ago. (The movie The Perfect Storm was based on that rescue, in which one of the members of the 106th lost his life.) It was they who were picking people off rooftops in New Orleans during the hurricane. It was they who were rescuing people from the flooding in Appalachia in 2002. If they are most noted for civilian rescues, however their real mission is military rescues. In 2003, some of them were deployed to Baghdad, in 2005 to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and then again to Kandahar in 2007. Currently there are 75 members of the 106th deployed in Afghanistan.

The 106th is one of only three such rescue teams in the entire United States, and the only one on the East Coast. And that is why, 99 times in the last 20 years, teams from the 106th have flown their rescue planes to Cape Canaveral to be available at launch time to rescue the astronauts in the Atlantic should the occasion rise. They are down there again this week. And this, the last trip of the shuttle Atlantis, is their 100th operation for NASA and the space mission.

Lt. Col. Blaine Bateman, who is the director of the Florida Air Force task force in charge of coordinating search and rescue missions for the shuttle, told Newsday that the 106th out of Westhampton "is highly sought after. It's their skill set."

One of their C-130s, with a crew of 12, flew down to Patrick Air Force Base at the Kennedy Space Center 10 days ago. If the Atlantis were abandoned, they would be on the scene of those in the water within three hours - Lt Com. Jim Kelley, 47, of Manorville, would have directed as many as a dozen helicopters - and have the downed astronauts in medical facilities on land within six. Inside the C-130 was medical equipment, rubber boats and other rescue necessities that the team could deploy out the back plane when victims were found. The swimmers would parachute down.

The launch of the Atlantis took place on Monday, May 11 at 5 p.m. And it went flawlessly, although there seems to have been some minor damage to some heat tiles where the right wing meets the fuselage that space scientists say should not to be a problem for the reentry next week.

By the time you read this, the seven astronauts (including Mike Massimino, of Franklin Square, Long Island) will have deployed the shuttle's cargo arm to snare the Hubble Telescope circling the earth 350 miles up, tote it into the cargo bay of the shuttle and begin repairs on it. There will be a total of six spacewalks of five hours each during this week and next. Batteries will be replaced, computers upgraded, worn parts fixed and a new lens fitted that will give this telescope an even better view of the universe during the next six years of the Hubble's life.

The Hubble, which was launched in 1990, has taken more than 570,000 pictures of stars, novas and space dust since it went into orbit. It sees farther out into space than any telescope ever has before and has been able to determine a much more precise date for the Big Bang, when the universe was created. It was about 13.7 billion years ago. With the new lens, the telescope will be able to view another 200 million years further back.

Among those members of the 106th Air Rescue Service from Westhampton currently in Florida are Lt. Col. Frank Townsend, who piloted the plane, Co-Pilot Jack Law, a lieutenant colonel in the NY Air National Guard, Sgt. Mike Torre, Maj. Scott Williams, Lt. Col. Jim Kelley, Col. Robert Landsiedel, the unit's vice-commander, and seven others, all of whom live with their wives and kids near Gabreski in towns such as Manorville, Wading River, Riverhead, Westhampton Beach and Eastport.