Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Today, the sight of a helicopter speeding toward some destination is familiar enough, but take a moment to consider: is there a life at stake? Is someone in peril and on a knife edge of survival, and will the helicopter crew be selflessly placing themselves in the most dangerous of situations for the sake of saving others? Ever since the First World War, aircraft of the Royal Naval Air Service and later the Fleet Air Arm have operated from land bases and ships at sea, flying search and rescue missions. In this book David Morris, Curator of Aircraft at the National Museum of the Royal Navy, tells the incredible story of Royal Navy search and rescue from the first mission by Sir Richard Bell-Davies VC to the present day.
Synopsis
The first time that man set out to locate and bring back to safety a lost friend, animal or precious object, the concept of search and rescue was born. In this book, David Morris, Curator of Aircraft and Large Objects at the Fleet Air Arm, takes a look at a century of Royal Navy search and rescue, from the first mission to rescue a downed pilot in the Balkans in November 1915 to the present day.
With a foreword by former Royal Navy Chief Test Pilot Captain Eric Brown, David Morris describes the aircraft and recounts some of the missions flown by Royal Navy search and rescue pilots over that century, from the Antarctic and South Georgia s Fortuna Glacier to the jungles of Borneo, the Arabian Sea and Hong Kong, not forgetting rescues in British waters, including the floods of 1953."