As the Captain of the RAF Seaking which rescued the Stornaway Bristow crew I can perhaps give the true facts about the rescue!
On reaching the incident the ditched crew were in a multi-seat dinghy. The wind was offshore and very variable in direction due to the hills. The sea state was also confused. We descended into an autohover close to the dinghy and briefed for a highline auto hover-trim recovery of the 4 man crew. The winch operator immediately reported problems with the auto trim (which feeds an error signal to the doppler to move the a/c) and I took back control. The doppler kept unlocking due to the confusing sea state which gave me problems in maintaining an accurate hover. I therefore disengaged the auto hover and flew a manual hover, successfully recovering the crew. We then flew them to Stornaway where a very relieved ex-RAF winchman told his story of being trapped in the tail. He was operating the FLIR at the time of the inadvertant ditching. The coupled system in the Seaking was good most of the time but it was/is a simplex system. All RAF SAR captains had to demonstrate they could night hover in total manual control every year and would quite often have to use that skill on real SAROPS. The skill of manual night hovering will have to be taught and practised if the BP SAR helicopters are to have the ability to react in all weathers. By the way the whiskey that Bristows sent was very enjoyable!!