Armed Forces: Cider Joe at Sea

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The twin-engine DC-3 lifted from the runway just after 5 p.m. and headed out over the Pacific for Hawaii. Barely an hour out, the World War II-vintage ship developed what sounded like engine trouble, and returned to San Francisco's International Airport for a thorough checkup. No problem was found, and at 11:30 p.m. it set out again. At 3:40 a.m., 525 miles out, there was trouble once more. The pilot radioed a passing airliner that loss of oil was forcing him to feather an engine and return to San Francisco. The morning papers reported matter-of-factly that the plane was missing. Not until the afternoon editions did word get out that one of the three men aboard was craggy, bespectacled Brigadier General Joseph Warren Stilwell Jr., 54, son of World War IIs Burma campaign hero, "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, and since early last year commander of U.S. Special Forces training, headquartered at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Stilwell's friends and family held out hope. For one thing, the missing plane was equipped with a four-man life raft, flares, and other emergency gear. Besides, Stilwell had always had his father's famed knack for survival. As leathery and almost as prickly as Vinegar Joe, he came to be known among his troops as "Cider Joe." A 1933 West Point graduate, Joe Stilwell won his combat spurs as a colonel in Burma campaign headquarters and as commander of the 23rd Infantry Regiment in Korea. From 1962 to 1964, he commanded the U.S. Support Group in Viet Nam, earning frowns from higher-ups for spending as much time manning machine guns and riding helicopters as he did at his Saigon desk. On one occasion, Stilwell helped carry out the wounded after being trapped by Viet Cong fire in the Mekong Delta, later became the only American general wounded in Viet Nam when enemy ground fire riddled a chopper he was riding. An inveterate skydiver, he returned to the U.S. only to suffer fractures of the back, pelvis and both heels when his parachute failed to open properly during a free-fall jump at Fort Bragg.

Extra Tanks. Like many other Green Berets, Stilwell had taken up flying, and it was his eagerness to log instrument time toward a commercial pilot's license that put him aboard last week's ill-fated flight. An old friend, Harold J. Grimes, 45, operator of a one-man West Coast air ferry service, was delivering a plane that a California winery had recently sold to the government of Thailand. Stilwell planned to go along as far as Hawaii, then return to the mainland. Taking a three-day pass from Fort Bragg, he went to San Francisco, first to deliver a couple of speeches and then to see off his son, Joe III, 27, an Army captain who was leaving for duty in Viet Nam.

The DC-3 took off with Grimes at the controls, the general as his copilot, and Harold Possum, 43, of Montclair, Calif., as navigator. Because Grimes added extra fuel tanks enabling it to carry 2,000 gallons of gasoline, the Coast Guard figured that the plane could stay aloft no more than an hour after losing power in one engine. Even so, DC-3s are renowned for their ditching capabilities, and searchers were at first instructed to look for a floating plane.