Painting commemorates 106th Rescue Wing 2017 mission to save crewmen on ship in mid-Atlantic

Oil painting captures the moment during April 24, 2017 mission when Air Guardsmen jumped into the night sky over the North Atlantic

F.S. Gabreski Air National Guard Base, Westhampton Beach (08/01/2022) — WESTHAMPTON BEACH, New York--The 36-inch by 48-inch oil painting by New Jersey artist Todd L.W. Doney, named "Tamar Rescue Mission," has a lot going on.

Through an open aircraft rear door, the viewer sees figures with swim fins and parachutes, leaping out into the night sky towards water below. Further out, other parachutes drift down towards a ship ablaze with lights.

But the eye always goes to the left. There a helmeted figure in camouflage looks the viewer in the eye with a glowing green night vision goggle stare.

Looking at the painting always results in a flood of memories, said New York Air National Guard 1st Lt. Jamie Bustamante, the helmeted figure in the painting.

"It's kind of surreal. It gives you a brief look back, and you go, 'Whoa, I actually did that,'" he said.

Bustamante, was one of two loadmasters on board a New York Air National Guard 106th Rescue Wing HC-130 rescue aircraft which dropped five pararescue Airmen, called "PJ's" and two Combat Rescue Officers over the dark North Atlantic on April 24, 2017.

Thier mission was to board the Slovenian freigher Tamar-- the ighted ship in the painting -- 1,700 miles out in the Atlantic, and provide emergency care to two critically injured crewmen.

They performed emergency surgeries which kept the men alive for 30 hours, until they could be evacuated by a Portuguese helicopter ot the Azores.

These Airmen were honored for their heroism in June during an awards ceremony at F.S. Gabreski Air National Guard Base, the home of the 106th Rescue Wing.

At their awards ceremony the painting honoring their effort was unveiled as well.

"It's great to seee this mission memorialized in a painting for the team," saidLt. Col. Sean Boughal, a Combat Rescue Officer who led the PJs onto the Tamar.

Seeing the painting brings everything rushing back, Bustamante said,

"I think what sticks out most in my mind, is you look at the ship, and you see the guys out there," Bustamante said about the picture. "I do remember seeing all that."

The idea for a mission painting, first came to Chief Master Sgt. Brian Mosher, the 106th Operations Group superintendent, said Major Michael O'Hagan, the wing's public affairs officer.

Mosher thought the mission would be a great National Guard heritage painting; a series of artworks that commemorate National Guard history over the years, O'Hagan said.

O'Hagan said he thought that was a great idea.

"I got excited about the prospect of capturing an image that would represent the mission," O'Hagan said. "For our unit it was such an extraordinarily complex rescue mission."

Almost every member of the 106th, based at Gabreski Air National Guard Base in Westhampton Beach on eastern Long Island, played a role in that mission, he said.

"Whatever you do here, you had skin in the game," O'Hagan said.

So, O'Hagan started the process of putting together a heritage painting proposal in 2018.

But the process of commissioning a heritage painting was not going to result in getting the Tamar mission on canvas that way, O'Hagan said.

There was already a Heritage Painting commemorating a 1979 rescue mission by the 106th. And another painting had been done featuring the Alaska Air National Guard's rescue wing. And there was a plan for another painting featuring the New York National Guard in the works, O'Hagan said.

He realized, that if he wanted a Tamar painting, he would have to make it happen himself.

Fortunately, O'Hagan has a friend who is a painter: Doney, a former illustrator, skilled gallery painter, and art professor at County College of Morris.

"When a friend asks me a favor, I like to be able to do it," Doney said.

His grandfather was a World War I doughboy, his uncle jumped into Holland with the 82nd Airborne Division in World War II, his father served in the Coast Guard during the Korean War, and his younger brother served in Iraq with the Illinois National Guard, Doney said.

He feels a connection with the military, which made him more interested in O'Hagan's project, he explained.

Doney, whose canvases sell for $1,000 to $15,000, agreed to do the work for the cost of his time and materials.

Fortunately, part of the process of nominating a subject for a National Guard Heritage painting, requires producing an image of what the finished painting might look like. O'Hagan had already done that.

He wanted an image representing the aircrew and operators, and also including the Tamar. He also wanted the view out the back of the HC-130 with jumpers going out. O'Hagan said.

He used existing Air Force images, as well as the few photographs taken by the team during the actual Tamar Rescue.

He made a loadmaster prominent in the shot to represent the aircrew. That balanced out the PJs jumping into the night, O'Hagan said.

"I found the images I wanted, and Frankensteined them all together in photoshop to make it look like the image I thought would be most interesting, to kind of capture the essence of the mission," O'Hagan said.

He shared this with Doney, who refined the image.

O'Hagan shared Doney's image with Bustamante and Boughal, to make sure the details were right.

"We started going back and forth with the sketches and computer sketches, "Doney recalled., "Michael wanted this to be totally 100 percent accurate."

Boughal pointed out that the static lines on the parachutes were red and not yellow, and that the parachutes were square and steerable, and not round.

Doney added green chem lights to the back of the jumpers' parachutes, because they wore red lights on the front and green on the back. This helped the Airmen orient themselves to one another in the dark night over the Atlantic.

Bustamante noted that instead of four cargo rollers in the floor of the HC-130 they only had three installed that night.

On one of Doney's sketches, O'Hagan noticed the uniform of the loadmaster looked more like the digital camo pattern the Marines wear, instead of the OCP-Operational Camouflage Pattern - worn by Air Force.

The airmen, including Mosher, made sure the patches were right, and that the flare chutes were in the right place in the back of the HC-130.

The process, Doney said, was the same he followed as an illustrator at the beginning of this career.

A fine artist takes the picture where he wants it to go, he said. An illustrator designs the image to the customers specifications

Of course, Leonardo DaVinci followed the illustrators process when he was painting The Last Supper in a monks' dining room in Milan, and that is considered fine art, Doney said.

An illustrator, he said, always puts his own touches on the piece.

O'Hagan shared the painting with the wing during a June 4 awards ceremony at which the Airmen involved on the mission received Air Force Commendation Medals for heroism.

"It was great to see this mission memorialized in a painting for the team," Boughal said.

The plan now is to display the painting in the 106th Rescue Wing headquarters building, O'Hagan said. Doney has also made a high-resolution digital image available so that the wing airmen can produce prints for themselves.

His Tamar painting may not be The Last Supper, but he is very happy with it, Doney said.

But what makes this painting special, though, Doney said, is the mission it illustrates.

"It wouldn't be a great painting unless those guys did what they did," he said. "It was really awesome to honor these guys who jumped out in the middle of the night to save lives."

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