I would imagine that, when the distress call was first put out, the distance from land led to the 'American Option' being considered. Through no-one's fault (their declared readiness is 24 hours!), it took longer for the Yanks to get under way and do the business than first estimated, which is why the casualty wasn't actually lifted till the ship was only 200 miles offshore. I daresay that, had it been known, when the Yanks were first launched, how long the whole thing would take, they would have been stood down and the incident handed to one of the 'usual suspects'. This isn't a dig at the Americans, who very kindly provided their aircraft and people - no doubt they did the job as expeditiously as they safely could.
I remember, though, an incident in early 2002 when the MH-53/Herc combo went out to a large yacht 500nm off the Scillies, and spent nearly 3 hours on scene getting two injured crew off it. An experienced colleague bumped into them when they put into St Mawgan on completion of the job, and heard at length how difficult it had been; when he mentioned how Brits might use a hi-line to ease the process, and offered to explain the principle in case it came in handy in future, he was apparently met with a look of 'how dare anyone suggest that our way of doing business could possibly be improved'! Oh well...
Last edited by TorqueOfTheDevil; 11th Dec 2008 at 16:53.