C@S
At the beginning of my career I spent a most enjoyable hold over on a SAR squadron acting as "survivor", spending time on the wire for any number of boat / wet / cliff evolutions. This certainly provided me with a great opportunity to fully comprehend the challenges and professionalism of SAR rear crew.
Subsequently I have instructed on both Junglie and RN SAR squadrons. Wet winching in the Sea King with its stable hover and LVI doppler meter is a relatively easy evolution to pick up and most pilots do so very quickly.
"SAR is not just hovering"
Actually in terms of the main physical ability required of a SAR helicopter pilot that is exactly what it is ... can you hover next to a boat / cliff / survivor / confined area!! The difficult bit is not this, appropriate initial and continuation training ticks this bit quite nicely. Once established in the hover then the control of these situations rightly falls to the rear crew. A successful SAR crew is a team led by a SAR Captain who has that combination of Airmanship, Professional Knowledge and Leadership to consistently make the right calls - teaching/imparting/fostering sound SAR captaincy is the difficult bit.
Your general comments about the lack of capability achieved by RN crews deployed around the world in the SAR role is wrong, I know this because I have been there deployed at Sea as well as on land on a permanent SAR base and I am therefore in a position to make a considered comparison. Over the years deployed crews have achieved a plethora of rescues in some of the most challenging of SAR scenarios. Throughout their careers, crews will complete continuation training in the full range of capabilities required including those SAR related ones.
Your use of single examples is meaningless, i'm sure that a quick trawl of the RAF SAR incident signals would also throw up events that when quoted in isolation would seem to show what is a professional and capable force in a negative light ...
This is the perennial non-dedicated SAR RN problem - 'yeah we've done a couple of grapple serials over the oggsplosh so we are good to go any time any place any where.'
The fact is that there is no problem, the large number of rescues carried out over the years prove that this is the case. Your throw away "a couple of grapple serials" comment is so far removed from the truth, that I seriously doubt that you have spent any significant period deployed with a front line RN unit, because surely you must have at some point in the past to feel justified to make such accusations.
Last edited by jungliebeefer; 10th June 2012 at 14:17.