To be fair, it is highly unlikely whoever wrote the report (from agency copy and the press release) even saw the photo, and certainly did not write the photo caption.
The writer would have been told to crunch out a few words (i.e. top and tail the press release), while the picture desk would have been told to find a pic of an air-sea rescue Sea King; a third person, the sub-editor, would have put the two together.
This is why sub-editors are anonymous!
The Mail has a great deal of previous for this sort of thing, including publishing a picture of one of the very young soldiers killed in the A10 v Warrior blue-on-blue in GW1, supposedly depicting another young soldier, very much alive, who had been had up in court on some serious matters.