Acampo veteran recalls ’72 rescue
ACAMPO — Capt. Bill Castro spent 24 years in the United States Navy, and said no event during his more than two decades of service stands out more than a rescue mission he oversaw in 1972.
At the time Castro was the commanding officer of the Navy’s Patrol Squadron 6, also known as the Blue Sharks, which was stationed at Naval Air Station Cubi Point in the Philippines.
On the morning of April 28, 1972, Castro and his squadron received a phone call to report to the base’s operational control center for a preflight briefing.
The mission was to find a seaman apprentice who had gone missing from the USS Molala, an ocean-going tug boat in the Philippine Sea. The crew believed the seaman had gone overboard and hadn’t seen him since 4 p.m. the prior day, Castro said.
The squadron’s primary mission was anti-submarine warfare, he said, with some search and rescue operations performed when needed.
“We had done some rescue missions,” Castro said. “Mostly we escorted aircraft from California to Hawaii, but quite often we’d be called out to find a lost plane and guide them in to the area. It was very seldom we were called for something like this.”
At 7 a.m. that morning, the Blue Sharks were airborne, headed to the last known location of the missing seaman, flying at 300 feet above sea level in large circles, Castro said.
He said that at about 10:45 a.m., an observer spotted a head in the water. The squadron dropped a smoke marker and directional beacon buoy, then prepared for two lanyard-tied rafts to be deployed from the Lockheed P-3 Orion.
After a practice low pass and seeing the sailor give a weak wave, the squadron prepared to drop the rafts, then saw several huge sharks circling their target.
The squadron came around again, lined up for the drop, and when the raft hit the water, the sailor swam slowly toward one of the vessels, Castro said.
The sailor eventually put a hand on the line connecting the two rafts, was able to inflate them and climb aboard before the sharks could attack.
“The odds are against you starting off,” Castro said. “We didn’t have high hopes of a successful mission, but we were very much elated when we found him.”
Castro’s squadron called for help from an Air Force patrol boat operating in the area, and within 30 minutes, the sailor was on board their vessel. He was eventually transported to the Cubi Point Naval Hospital by helicopter, he said.
Upon landing back at the base, Castro said he visited the seaman, an 18-year-old from San Diego.
Castro said the boy was totally fried, sun burned and blistered above his shoulders, and had used his Navy boot camp water survival training — keeping air trapped in his trousers and held between his legs — to stay afloat.
The seaman told Castro he was sitting on the rear of the Molala at about sunset the previous day when the ship lurched and threw him into the air and into the water. He spent 16 hours in the water before Castro’s squadron arrived.
Following the rescue, Castro said he never received any award or medal, but simply a warm handshake and a smile from his commanding officer.
Born in Pittsburg, Castro attended UC Davis and enlisted in the Navy in 1952. After Cubi Point, he went to the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., and was part of a carrier strike group for two years.
He was then stationed in Japan for about 18 months and commanded a patrol squadron in the western Pacific
Ocean.
“One of my bosses told me that if I wanted stars in my future, I’d have to go to Washington (D.C.),” Castro said. “My wife and kids were in Concord at the time, and if I was to stay in, it would have meant walking away from my family. So I retired and returned to Concord.”
After leaving the Navy, Castro spent about 10 years working for various electronics companies before retiring and moving to Acampo about 30 years ago.
He said nothing he did during his service compared to that 1972 mission.
“(There was) nothing that big,” he laughed. “My sister used to ask me what I remembered about Japan, and I’d say I don’t know. I was busy working. I had a very good career in the Navy. I enjoyed it and worked hard.”