42 Sqn had a long range SAR epic which never realy hit the head lines in 78 in the vicinity of Lajes. Like Pete Rosie's crew they flew every day for many days with, unfortunately, no result. Below is a a short piece about the event.
These are not tsunamis or tidal waves, but huge breaking walls of water that come out of the blue. Suspicions these were fact not fiction were roused in 1978, by the cargo ship München. She was a state-of-the-art cargo ship. The December storms predicted when she set out to cross the Atlantic did not concern her German crew. The voyage was perfectly routine until at 3am on 12 December she sent out a garbled mayday message from the mid-Atlantic. Rescue attempts began immediately with over a hundred ships combing the ocean. "We hoped to find at least a life-raft with people. We never found a living soul" says Captain Pieter de Nijs, München search coordinator.
The ship was never found. She went down with all 27 hands. An exhaustive search found just a few bits of wreckage, including an unlaunched lifeboat that bore a vital clue. It had been stowed 20m above the water line yet one of its attachment pins had twisted as though hit by an extreme force. The Maritime Court concluded that bad weather had caused an unusual event. Other seafarers could not help but consider the possibility of a mythical freak wave.