I think that you are absolutely right.
I have good friends who work for Portland and Lee SAR and they all agree that it is perfectly possible to run a SAR flight with one aircraft. The Lee aircraft has a 100% servicability rate this year and last year it was down for 90 minutes...throughout the entire year....they achieve all of that with either 1 or maybe 2 engineers. If you go to Portland SAR flight tomorrow there will be 5/6 people there....thats it. If you go to 771 at Culdrose tomorrow there will be close to 100 people there (Unfair comparison I know but it makes the stats look good).