ULTIMATE RESCUE HELICOPTER
 

Watch the second part of the new series 'helicopter rescue' and the commentator quoted 'Sea King, the ultimate rescue helicopter, is this true?

Nope he should have said a Wessex;)

If I were a long way out at sea I'd rather there was a '53E on standby.

The Sea King is the ultimate military rescue helicopter in the UK.

Sea King
 

Yes, of course it is.:ok:

Fixed for you

Fixed for you, again.

Oh, so glad I don't have to attempt to regurgitate any trite 'mission statements' any more.

More barf than SARF.

errrrrr....not quite true about the Sea King being the only.....seems to remember some USAF Helicopters being there as well.

All this stuff about 'ultimate rescue helicopters' .... if you are bobbing about in the oggin, you will be grateful for ANY rescue helicopter. You also know that the guys and gals flying these things will do their very, very best to get you - be grateful!

Interestingly, however, one of the pilots did discuss what would happen if the aircraft got into difficulties and I'm not sure I've heard stated explicitly on camera before.

My fear about what replaces Sea King, is will it be 'best of breed' or 'cheapest' and bought to keep some MP's constituents in a job. I saw recently an aircraft, supposedly being offered as an SAR cab, in which the crew couldn't stand upright in the back :ugh::{

O-D

You can stand upright in the back of a JIGSAW 332L2.
But only if you're a Person Of Restricted Growth.

Watched a rescue attempt in Brighton a few weeks ago. Didn't recognise the helo at all. Looked very civvy to me. Didn't look to have a lot of room inside either but I guess it was cheap to run. Unsuccessful rescue but not SARS fault.

What's The Solution?
 

Maybe the time has come with this Thread to move it on.

Sea King has proved a pretty good cab but the airframes etc are now approaching or past their sell by date.

First question then: would a fleet replacement of Sea Kings by new Sea Kings with updated cockpits and other goodies be an answer ie is the spec of the current Sea King 3A still fit for purpose?

Second question: if the answer to the first question is 'NO' - however you wish to express that word, what represents an outline spec for an SAR aircraft which fulfils the needs of the UK, Falklands and wherever else we want to provide SAR cover?

Third question: Is the current RN/RAF/Coastguard mix efficient, sustainable, necessary and if not, what should it be and what would the basing strategy be?

Old Duffer

I suspect, as ever, that a greater proportion of mission success can be put down to the crews not the airframe.

A shame some people, on the many threads covering capabilities of kit, seem to take any criticism of their (current or former) mount as criticism of their operational skills. In truth their ability to cope with sub-optimal equipment highlights crews' abilities even more.

New Sea Kings continued to be built into the 90s so many are nowhere near the hours of the original Mk1s. I think the tooling was scrapped after the 3A buy in 93-94. The oddity of the SK fleet is that most of the ASaCs, which by common consent are superb, are original Mk1s. This was because they were meant to be purely temporary, with Merlins being the preferred/best bid for the upgrade to Mk7. But then the RN insisted on specifying new Sea Kings, rejecting Merlin. As new ones couldn’t be built, and the RN wouldn’t swap the old cabs for newer ones which were surplus, the old ones had to be modified. Because of this, DGA(N) withdrew support for the Mk7 programme.


At the RAF’s insistence, to save money the spec of the Mk3A was actually downgraded from what had been developed in the 80s. Other parts of it are excellent. I think most would say the 3A is fit for purpose. They are 25 years newer than most of the Mk7s, so someone will make good use of them.

Taking Gannet SAR Flight as an example, 298 call outs in 2011 with 240 people given assistance.

Any new cabs replacing the Sea King will have quite a tough act to follow :ok:

Just This Once,

No, Sir, the previous correspondence hasn't passed me by. I posed the questions because after the - how can I put this delicately - difficulties over the way forward, I have seen nothing which convinces me that the services are going to get out of the SAR business anytime soon. It follows that until I see an alternative 'game plan' with a robust transition plan, I judge nobody actually knows where this is all going. I am cynical/realistic enough to know that we shan't simply bin SAR and leave it all to the coastguards

I have always regarded military run SAR as being a pretty good recruiting Sgt and it is very popular amongst the civvy population. The decision to send Flt Lt Wales to SAR was a master stroke in many ways.

One only needs to look at almost every facet of public policy to know that:
a. we are deep in the smelly stuff.
b. nobody seems to actually have a grasp of the way forward.
c the political elite is doing what they always do when a and b apply and that is; look at all sorts of unimportant issues - HofL reform, gay marriage etc, elected police commissioners - which will cost money we don't have.
I'm not being party political just wondering what the country is sliding towards.

Old Duffer

Fair enough!:ok:

SAR-H
 

And yet, amazingly, 'we' will.
Sadly, military SAR is a lifed service. No MoD money will be spent on it post transition to MCA SAR, and that transition willhappen on time.

Sun.

Oh dear, it was clearly too much to expect people to understand what ultimate actually means...

As for a replacement, the only capability which a modern aircraft has, which the Sea King lacks, is the ability to transit at a decent speed.

Torque,

I see what you did there; ultimate and ultimate. Witty.;)

Sun.

The USMC has a bunch of mothballed CH-53D's out in Arizona....whats about upgrading them? It is not as one really needs a boat hulled Helicopter for SAR work. Add some refueling probes....updated avionics....oh heck....just buy some new build MH-53's and be done with it.

Boeing might be convinced to build some more MH-47's.....just buy them off the shelf this time.

And no aberrant apostrophes - things are looking up

I'll get my coat

Sun Who,

Your post leaves me even more worried!

Rushed solutions are often bad solutions and if the services are compelled to extend military SAR, despite funding issues, the dosh will have to be found - hence my earlier desparately worried posts.

If we track back to the formation of SAR services, I think we find RAF Coastal and Fighter Commands competing for a slice of the action. The 'funded' task was to gather in aircrew in extremis. The 'let's save all civvies on the side of the mountain - any mountain' came later and acknowledged that there were relatively few military call outs, so we needed to do something in between and a very successful and worthy aim it has been, with stonkingly good results.

The armed forces 'can do' attitude has got them into trouble many a time but this is a sort of reverse scenario. How do we back out of SAR unless there is reliable replacement? I submit it can't be done.

At every turn and with every government, the forces eventually get called on to do something unfunded and because nobody else can. Olympics are but the latest example. While all this is going on, the services are being dumped on from a great height by politicians and with a muted response from those who lead us.

Old Duffer

Sun,

Oh yes, I'm full of it! In the same way, in four years' time, we will all, without any doubt or dissenters, be able to state that UK military SAR is completely perfect. Unless Old Duffer and his junta stand and deliver, of course.

TOTD:8

(By the way, OD, no disrespect to you - but I think you will be shocked how quickly what we have now will be canned. And if the new service isn't quite ready, there might be a tiny extension of mil SAR - ie weeks/months, not years - or it might just be accepted that an inferior/incomplete service is acceptable in the short term because the MOD can't/won't extend the Sea King).

So Now We Have It
 

This week's FLIGHT contains a statement about the UK SAR contract. Apparenetly, Bond, Bristow and CHC Scotia will compete for three 'lots'. Lots 1 and 2 have slightly different specifications, whilst Lot 3 seems to be a 'you can have it all' option. Lots 1 and 2 require a minimum capacity of eight and four casualties and in both cases two stretchers amongst that number. Range is specified as 200nm, except Stornoway where it is 250nm. Lots 1 and 2 relate to different geographical areas/locations, although by implication Lot 3 covers the whole UK.

My immediate reaction is one of flexibility. If the successful contractors have different cabs, can there be any mutual support offered? We recently had an RN aircraft coming in to help a rescue on Valley's doorstep.

I've lost the plot on how it's intended to deal with the Falklands but where do the RN and RAF stand regarding any sort of combat SAR or is that all too difficult without the US doing it for us?

Of particular interest is the article immediately above this announcement. It covers the problems the Norwegians are having getting their order for NH90s delivered. One cab down and eight to go. However, our Norwegian friends are losing their rag with NH that's for sure.

Old Duffer

I have to agree with the earlier comment about the Wessex 5.

Having been dangling underneath a Mk4 Seaking with downdraft that made you feel like you were in a washing machine I would say the Wezzy takes the prize....

BTW I also liked the Lynx as it got to the SAR shout alot quicker than anyone else

I hope it said more than that. In 1986 the beancounters took that simplistic view when drawing a 200nm ring around every SAR station, demanding closure when overlap occurred. "Time on task" was the cry, completely ignored. :ugh:

They compounded it by using a BBC weather map, with the Orkneys and Shetlands located in a box off the Northumbrian coast. :E

Nothing about time on task, loiter capability or whatever its called. Perhaps the spec is written by somebody who thinks SAR is a quick dash out and dash back.

Now you can see why I'm worried - but I'll speak to a politician and he will explain why I need not worry!

250nm radius of action would also be useful out of Cornwall...

Old Duffer


That 1986 meeting, the SAR Planning Committee, was my first real experience of Don'tgivea****itis among beancounters. The Chairman, an Air Commodore, was completely ambushed by the BC, who waltzed in toward the end, set up a flipchart with map and circles, stated the overlapping stations must close and walked out. The Chairman was furious, but it transpired his bosses had known all about it, rolled over and not bothered telling him. (The main subject of that meeting was agreeing the conversion programme details for CSAR. The BC's announcement served to divert attention from CSAR, which in hindsight was probably his aim).

Believe me, Main Building and AbbeyWood have many such BCs and non-aircrew/engineers who are hostile to what SAR tries to achieve, and simply don'tgivea****.

By the way, I watched "Helicopter Rescue" on the box last night. Excellent. Pity it ended with something like "The iconic yellow helicopter will ALWAYS be there when needed". Perhaps the producers hadn't been briefed by MoD. It would be entirely typical if one part of MoD ploughed resources into supporting the programme, oblivious to the cancellation of Military SAR.

Swap the RAF's Harriers for some half decent helo's the spams don't want or just sell them all for chicken feed....... :}

I remember when at Odious and the RAF were due to introduce the SAR Sea King to replace the venerable Wessex, we had an old Chiefy who should have been put out to pasture years before, but somehow against all the odds he was selected for Seakings and went off to do close to two years of courses, he was first trained to be dual trade and then did all the Sea King courses...
We had a visiting Sea King from Boscombe pop in for fuel which had all sorts of gubbings hanging on the nose... And faster than squirrel sh*t this Chief normally noted for polishing chairs and not a lot else was out there to refuel it, marshalling in the bowser and two years of courses later... He couldn't find the fuel filler caps, much to the mirth of everyone that had wandered out... Apparently Boscombe had a early American built prototype that had the filler caps on the other side of the aircraft... :}

Yes a civilian SAR service will be cheaper because all the crews will ex RAF/RN requiring no training but when these people retire and the successful bidder needs to train staff with no previous experience and with all the associated costs it will be interesting to see if they are "cost effective".

I wonder why apart from a few exceptions most nations believe that a military SAR service is the best option or has everyone else got it wrong?

As the UK actually builds a helicopter that is used around the world for SAR - Merlin, what does it tell potential customers if the UK operates Sikorsky or Eurocopter helicopters.

The US uses full time reservist -why can't the UK?

That's a pretty impressive fail, seeing as the yellow Sea King has filler caps on both sides of the fuselage...!

Overlapping Stations
 

Please can somebody help this poor soul make sure he understands the situation.

If overlapping stations result in a closer - a gap occurs or the span of the surviving stations increase and with it the response times to places previously served by the (now closed) station. In addition, the required range of the cab must increase or its time on task reduces or it needs somewhere to refuel. Flexibility is lost and the total deployable assets reduce. Is that right or what have I missed or not understood.

Moving on please (in my day the helios had the callsign PEDRO and the fixed wing topcover was PLAYMATE so you see how long it's been). What now provides top cover or coordination in the more complex rescues? I have heard tell that a C130 has been used but don't know if this is just gossip or fact.

Old Duffer

OD:
Now that's an interesting throw away line! In the BoI for the Sea King mid-air tragedy on 22/03/2003 it was reported that the inbound ASaC requested, "Where's my playmate". The ever helpful good folk at MOD have always said since that he was referring to his o/b oppo. Given what you say above, is it not more likely that he was referring to his fixed wing top cover?

Best Replacement for the Sea King
 

Wouldn't this be a potential replacement for the old girl, especially if this potential donk upgrade were included (with ackowlegement to the Rotorheads thread).

BTW, weren't Carson and Sikorsky considering the GE-T58-16 from the Phrog as a possible engine upgrade? Whatever happened to that idea?

Nick

I only started this thread as I wondered if the various versions of the H60 would have been better or even god forbid the Mil14 that was on display at RIAT this year. As an aside is the ARCC staying at Kinloss Garrison

Chugalug2 and Post 38,

I didn't mean it to be a throwaway line but merely trying to indicate that as (probably) the last member of ground crew to do the crewmens' course - when the job first went to 'spare' Air Sigs and to have flown 'casually' thereafter as a crewman on both SH - it was called SRT then - and to have done the last SAR with a Sycamore (Feb 66), it was quite a while ago. 1964-69 to be precise.

The SAR flights and those SRT (SH) assets available for SAR, used PEDRO when on task. For example in Hong Kong from 1967, when a permanent RAF helicopter presence was established, the calls were PEDRO 98 and 99. On the first time we did it for real, a civvy ATC at Kai Tak told us to 'wait out' when we called. His horizons were rapidly readjusted much to the annoyance of the commercial traffic, as we sped across the harbour and into the dark off Lantau. I use the term 'sped' advisedly; for anybody who knows the Whirlwind 10, all things are relative.

Mainly Shackletons, which provided top cover etc, the identity was PLAYMATE but occasionally another type did this work.

I do not know when the universal title RESCUE was adopted but somebody will enlighten me err long.

Your comment about the Sea King/Herc accident may well have been just such an enquiry as you describe. It might be relevant if the age/experience of the pilot making the call were known.

Old Duffer