he couldn’t stand on his legs or put weight on them. Te crew that met the aircraft helped him remove his gear and get out of his seat, but when they tried to use the door’s emergency jettison, the mechanism failed. “It’s a good thing we didn’t have to ditch,” says Baur, “because I probably wouldn’t have gotten out.” Returning to his hotel room, Baur saw his AWOL bag sitting on the
bed waiting for him, as if nothing in the world had changed. Te pararescuemen took him out for dinner. “I remember falling asleep while eating pizza. Te PJs helped me back to my room, where I passed out. I was wiped.”
Another Allende survivor, the second mate, had been picked up by
the Japanese cargo ship Torungen on Dec. 10. While the air search was officially suspended Monday due to poor visibility, 10 commercial vessels continued their search into the night without success. Te bodies of seven Merchant Marines were recovered. Te remaining 24 were never found. Taranov, with the help of a Reader’s Digest reporter, wrote letters
(see below) to the crews of both Pave Hawks, thanking them for “risking your own lives to save mine.” He and Baur were briefly reunited before Taranov’s return to Ukraine.
In the months to come, the Pave
Hawk crews were told they’d been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for the mission. But Baur remembers someone pulling them aside as they were preparing to receive the medals. “Te Pentagon decided that since the mission was flown in peace time, they couldn’t award a DFC to the crews,” he says. But they had to pin something on the crews; families and other loved ones had gathered to watch. Baur doesn’t recall what medal it was. “Tey just clipped it on. ‘HC-130 crews flew with minimal rest in bad weather to support some helicopters.’ Tat was the award narrative.” In 1998, the crews were presented
with the Medal for Valor from the state of New York. Two years later, the Air Force unceremoniously issued the crews boxes with Air Medals inside.
Baur went on to fly the HC-130 in the same squadron and retired in 2007 after 26 years of military service. He later became a senior captain at a major US airline and the president of Hughes Aerospace Corp., one of the largest air navigation services providers, recognized for pioneering NextGen satellite navi- gation with the FAA and ICAO worldwide. A dual-rated ATP, Baur continues to
fly helicopters, turboprops, and jet air- liners today. He is recognized as a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and holds a BS from Embry-Riddle Aero- nautical University, an MBA from Brown University, and an MBA from IE Business School in Madrid, Spain.
MARCH 2021 ROTOR 37
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