I was never involved in one of these exercises, although we did have several people fall overboard while I was on the ship. The first thing to do was to throw the person a flotation device, and then report the event to the bridge. The bridge would immediately note the location and would report the location to the surrounding ships, and would simultaneously launch helicopters and whale boats to rescue the sailor, if it was safe to do so. Also, when it was safe to do so, the ship would turn around and search for the individual. But this took a lot of area and time to do. It took about three miles to turn the ship around, and thirty minutes to return to the original location, so that was the very last possibility.
Repel Boarders Drill (3/16/1976)
