Orkim Harmony: How Aussies found needle in a haystack

The RAAF crew found the missing tanker, in a stroke of luck, minutes before running out of fuel.

BUTTERWORTH: In an exclusive interview with the New Straits Times, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) crew recounted the nail-biting search efforts for the missing tanker, MT Orkim Harmony.

Lieutenant Adam Stef, P-3C Orion 92 Wing Commander and pilot, and Peter Knox, the squadron leader pointed out sheer luck as the reason how the missing tanker carrying 21 crew members and 6,000 tonnes of petrol worth RM21mil was discovered.

The Malaysian search team was concentrating on areas further south so the Aussie crew, who had been tasked to scour the South China Sea in the Gulf of Thailand, felt that it was more sensible to head up north and expand the search area.

“Well, we knew the Malaysians were searching further south, so it just made sense for us to search further north to expand the search area,” said Steff.

The RAAF crew, however, did not spot the missing tanker the first time they passed it by as it was lost among the approximately 20 to 25 other ships as well as fishing boats in the area.

With their fuel levels running low, the RAAF crew decided to have another look at the search area before returning to base and that was when they spotted the missing vessel.

“We found it with just five minutes more time on station. Weather was also difficult. We found her, passed the information to Malaysian authorities and headed home,” said Knox.

The reason why they had missed the tanker was because the Indonesian pirates that had hijacked the ship had painted over the ship’s name on the bow and stern so that it read “Kim Harmon”.

“That was the difficult bit because we actually passed it first and continued north. We had a few minutes left, so we went back to where we passed it again and looked at it more closely. That’s when we realised they had changed the name,” said the pilot.

When asked what would have happened had the name of the tanker actually been Kim Harmon, both crew members laughed it off saying it wasn’t possible.

“Yeah, we knew it wasn’t. It just made sense and you can almost see the ‘OR’ (in the name Orkim) being painted over,” said Knox.

Following the discovery, the pilot turned around for a second look and took high-definition digital images from transparent blisters that were mounted on the sides of the aircraft.

“I didn’t see anyone on the boat. We only went past it and took photographs of the ship, which is probably a good thing because we did not want them to be alerted to the fact that we had found them.”

“Plus, we didn’t want to spook them and wanted to give Malaysian authorities a better-than-even chance of recovering the ship,” Knox was quoted as saying.

Pleased with their discovery, the RAAF crew took off after being airborne for close to eight hours.

“We were not sure how many hours it would take them (Malaysian authorities) to reach the vessel. When we found it… yeah… we were very happy, especially because we had almost run out of fuel.”

The unsung heroes have now returned to their home base at RAAF Edinburgh in Adelaide since their deployment here has come to an end.