How many helicopters do you want? We had ten sitting at Longford. No GPS certainly, can't recall now when we installed our private LORAN chain, but we were well practised in over water DR, in any event we had the ability to home on the F-27 transmissions and use of NDB, VOR, DME, weather radar which was quite good at picking up airborne targets such as the F-27. From the report.
Although there is no certainty that the projected missions would in practice have been flown as shown, it gives a useful comparison of alternative actions and indicates that timely use of one of the Longford helicopters might have resulted in successful rescue action.The decision to not check the availability of rescue helicopters other than NSC and PVFis considered to have been an error of judgement.The SARMC was by far the best informed of the Melbourne RCC personnel regarding the normal capabilities and likely response times of various organisations in the area. This seems to have proved a distinct disadvantage in this case, in that he depended on his knowledge and experience of the typical situation rather than checking on actual availability at the time.
Had the available resources been employed in a more effective manner, his rescue may have been successful.