Marlin A. Fairbourn, a U.S. Air Force Reserve pilot during the Vietnam War, was willing to go out of his way on one mission to save the lives of men he didn't know.

Brother Fairbourn, currently president of the Hawaii Honolulu Mission, was a major stationed at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. Often, on a cargo flight, he would fly to Hawaii and occasionally to Vietnam, and then return. His plane was a C-124 with a normal air speed of 260 mph. The plane could carry about 80,000 pounds of men and cargo. There were 12 men on his crew.On one flight, after leaving Hawaii for Vietnam, he had flown for about four hours in bad weather when he was asked by radio operators on Wake Island to listen on the emergency frequency for a weak, unclear signal. The Wake Island operators had been hearing the signal on the hour and the half hour for four days.

As the plane flew, the radio signals became stronger. Those sending the emergency broadcast identified themselves as five men in a disabled, partially submerged boat adrift and lost in the ocean. To conserve their radio batteries, they limited transmissions to every half hour. The plane's navigator determined their approximate location and passed it along to Wake Island.

The weather was still bad and the plane was flying in clouds. But when the Wake Island operators asked Brother Fairbourn to continue the search if he had time and fuel, the pilot agreed and diverted toward the suspected position.

Brother Fairbourn dropped the plane below the clouds through what seemed like a bottle of black ink. The storm began to break up and stars were visible. Still, spotting a small craft in the open ocean seemed like an impossible task.

Brother Fairbourn asked those on the boat to shoot a flare and it was spotted straight ahead. After the plane descended to 1,000 feet, the men on the boat radioed that they could see it. Then the crew on the plane saw the boat, circled it and determined precise coordinates to radio back to Wake Island. With the location identified, the men on the boat were rescued the next morning by a Coast Guard ship.

A short news report credited the Coast Guard with the rescue without a word about how the boat was found. However, the owner of the boat paid tribute to Brother Fairbourn and his crew for their training and willingness to divert from their original mission to save some stranded strangers.