6 February 1941 – 6 February 2011
‘Seventy Years of RAF Search and Rescue’
WORLD WAR TWO
On December 18 1939, a group of 24 British Vickers Wellington medium bombers were frustrated by low clouds and fog in their mission to bomb Wilhelmshaven, and they turned for home. The formation attracted the energetic attention of Luftwaffe pilots flying Messerschmitt 109 and 110 fighter aircraft and more than half of the Wellingtons went down in the North Sea. The German air sea rescue service, Seenotdienst, sent rescue boats based at Hörnum to work with Heinkel 59 float planes to save some twenty British airmen from the icy water. This was the first multiple air-sea rescue operation.
During the first two years of war, the British had no coordinated air-sea rescue (ASR) units, just 28 marine craft launches and no dedicated aircraft. Inaugurated as the Marine Craft Section just eleven days after the Royal Air Force itself was founded, the Marine Craft Section initially provided back-up for the flying boats. The ditching of a British aircraft in the Channel or the North Sea usually doomed its crew, only one out of five would survive. Fighter Command borrowed 12 Lysander aircraft from the British Army to use as spotter planes for ASR.
BATTLE OF BRITAIN
Early Allied rescues of downed airmen were ad hoc affairs involving a search by operational aircraft from the crews own unit and then attempting to divert any surface craft in the vicinity to the aircrew in distress. New Zealand pilot, Flt Lt RF Aitken even borrowed a Walrus flying boat from the Fleet Air Arm and saved 35 airmen over the summer of 1940.
One of the most important lessons learnt from the Battle of Britain was that the RAF could not afford to lose pilots who ditched to the sea. British fighters such the Spitfire and the Hurricane did not carry inflatable rafts, only lifejackets which were little help against the cold. During the early stages of the battle 220 aircrew were killed or missing in the Chann
Ministarstvo odbrane Velike Britanije u srijedu je najavilo da će Ukrajini poslati helikoptere.
To je prvi put da britanske vlasti toj zemlji šalju helikoptere kao vid vojne pomoći još od početka ruske invazije.
Potvrdio je to britanski ministar odbrane Benn Wallace. To će biti prve letjelice koje zahtijevaju ljudsku posadu, a koje je Ujedinjeno Kraljevstvo poslalo Ukrajini od početka rata.
Biće obezbijeđena tri helikoptera Sea King, a prvi je već dopremljen Ukrajini, saznaje BBC.
U posljednjih šest sedmica, ukrajinske posade obučene su u Velikoj Britaniji da lete i održavaju letjelicu, kako bi obezbijedile sposobnosti traganja i spašavanja.
Wallace je rekao da će Velika Britanija, takođe, poslati dodatnih 10.000 artiljerijskih metaka.
Ministar odbrane je rekao da će artiljerijski meci pomoći ukrajinskim oružanim snagama da osiguraju nedavno oslobođenu teritoriju.
Sea King helikoptere su ranije koristili i Kraljevsko ratno vazduhoplovstvo i Kraljevska mornarica, a posljednji helikopter je mornarica povukla iz upotrebe 2018. godine.
