THE thick morning fog above the Bosagong Mountains of Central Sulawesi limited visibility for the crew of a search plane. This was in April of 1977. The team from the National Search and Rescue (SAR) Center was having difficulty finding the main fuselage of a DHC 6 Twin Otter owned by Merpati Nusantara Airlines, which had gone missing on March 29.

With the skies clouded, the land route was the only other way to conduct a search. If three survivors