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Missing mariners rescued after Air Force crew spots ‘SOS’ on Pacific island

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Three mariners who apparently sailed off course and ran out of fuel were rescued from an uninhabited island with the help of the U.S. Air Force.
An Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker was near the end of its pattern, looking for a missing white and blue skiff and its crew in the western Pacific, when it turned to avoid rough weather and spotted a tiny island. “That’s when we saw ‘SOS’ and a boat right next to it on the beach,” Lt. Col. Jason Palmeira-Yen, the cargo plane’s pilot with the Hawaii Air National Guard, said in an Air Force statement. The plane was dispatched Sunday from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam with a crew of Hawaii and Pennsylvania Air National Guard members to search for three mariners who set out on what should have been about a 25-mile journey from one Micronesian atoll to another, but never arrived at their destination. They apparently sailed off course and ran out of fuel — the uninhabited island where they were found is about 120 miles from their departure point — said the Australian military, which took part in the rescue along with the U. S. Coast Guard and Federated States of Micronesia. The stranded sailors had set sail last Thursday, but when they failed to arrive more than a day later, a local notified Joint Rescue Sub-Center Guam that they were missing.

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