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Now there were no more jokes about the tower's rock and roll. Its men called it "Old Shaky," and the gag was grim with fear. All the talk was about getting ashore. In letters home, and in calls via Air Force radio, their growing terror spread to their families. Fortnight ago, Civilian Engineer Eddie Robertson spoke to his wife Margaret in Medford, Mass. TT-4's legs were badly damaged, he told her. "They're trying to take us off." Back of her husband's words, Margaret Robertson heard "a loud crunching," as if the tower were being twisted by a monster wrench. Welder Vincent Brown reported to his wife that the tower had been swaying too much for work. "Air Force boys were forever kneeling and saying their rosaries. The horror of it was awful." Elnor Phelan, wife of TT-4's commanding officer, Captain Gordon Phelan, remembers that her husband called as often as twice a day. He was tense with worry and had, he told her, asked repeatedly to have his men evacuated from the tower.
Search & Salvage. When last week's storm struck, it was too late. Hopefully, Captain Phelan asked T-AKL 17 to stand by through the night; he thought his tower would hold together and that his men could get off on Wasp helicopters in the morning. But in the morning all that could be recovered was the body of Master Sergeant Troy Williams floating in the fast-running sea. Wasp with its destroyer guard searched through a long two days. Divers investigated tapping sounds coming from the twisted underwater wreckage. But there were no survivors. The sounds that might have been made by men hanging on in some submerged air pocket were probably only the grinding of loose metal swinging in the long Atlantic swells. Old Shaky was dead—and so were all aboard.
* Named for its similarity to offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.