Coast Guard: 'We're out there to save a life'

Pilot new to Sumter, but highly regarded Shaw pilot still missing

By ANNABELLE ROBERTSON
Item Staff Writer
arobertson@theitem.com

The search for Capt. Nicholas Giglio and his F-16 Fighting Falcon has twice been expanded, and the Coast Guard, with assistance from the Air Force, is combing a roughly 1,300-square-mile area off the South Carolina coast.

That had grown from a rectangle-shaped area of approximately 1,000 square miles about 30 miles northeast of Charleston and, earlier, a smaller area of about 725 square miles about 40 miles off Folly Beach.

“We have a 50-by-35-mile box that we are searching off the South Carolina coast,” said Bobby Nash. “It's basically the same area, but it has grown broader.”

The total area covered as of 4 p.m. Friday, he said, was 4,000 square nautical miles.
Giglio, of the 20th Fighter Wing at Shaw Air Force Base, was reported missing about 8:30 p.m. Thursday after a mid-air collision with another Shaw-based F-16.

The other F-16 was piloted by Capt. Lee Bryant, who was able to land safely at Charleston Air Force Base. Bryant was examined by Air Force medical personnel and is unharmed.

The aircraft were participating in night training maneuvers.

Participating in the search are one helicopter, a Coast Guard Cutter Yellowfin, a small boat from the Coast Guard station in Georgetown, another small vessel from its Charleston station and a C-130 Hercules fixed-wing aircraft.

The C-130, said Nash, is commonly used for search and rescue offshore and flew in from Clearwater, Fla., to assist. Five to six guardsmen are aboard.

“It's a turboprop aircraft that can stay in the air for 12 hours, so it gives a lot of on-scene time,” he explained, “whereas a helicopter can only stay in the air for four hours.”

As many as a dozen guardsmen are manning the cutter, with four or five on each small boat and another four on the helicopter, Nash said.

At the time of the collision, the weather conditions were cloudy and rainy with 3-foot seas. Currently, conditions are cloudy with scattered showers.

“We're out there to save a life,” Nash said. “And there are a lot of things that are working for the pilot right now. There's his Air Force training. (Air Force) pilots are well-trained and have plenty of survival gear on board, including rafts and flairs and signaling devices, which is not what your average boater would have. There is (also) all the rescue equipment that we have on board. We just have to remain confident that if he's out there, we can find him and bring him home.”

The Coast Guard will continue its search, he added, as long as necessary.

“We will search as long as there is the possibility of life, until we have saturated the area and until, if there was someone out there, we would have found them,” he said. “This is a tough situation, but we have been doing search and rescue for more than 200 years, and we do it very, very well. We are going to do our very best to find this pilot.”

Nash requested that any civilians who are thinking about joining the search, particularly with a boat or plane, refrain from doing so.

“We have a lot of aircraft and a lot of agencies involved. We have surface and air assets, and we would rather that (civilians) stayed away. They would be putting themselves at unnecessary risk, as well as putting our search and rescue team members and potentially the pilot at risk, too.”

Contact Staff Writer Annabelle Robertson at arobertson@theitem.com or (803) 774-1250.