NAVY NEWS, FEBRUARY 2011


9


Normal service resumed


THE Royal Navy’s distinctive red-and-grey rescue helicopters have been ranging far and wide from their base at HMS Gannet in the first


days of 2011 . The duty Search and Rescue (SAR) Sea Kings headed to all points of the compass with seven calls in seven days in the first full week of the new year, resuming normal high levels of activity after a strangely-quiet Hogmanay period. Christmas week – December 20-26 – brought the team, based at Prestwick, six emergencies, including one on Christmas Day and two on Boxing Day. One job was to fly a teenager to hospital after a sledging accident at Ayr, a short hop for the aviators. They landed on the golf course (pictured) and took the lad to Glasgow for observations, skirting snow showers along the way. Three were for medical transfers from the Queen of the Hebrides, Islay, and the others included sorties to Lochgilphead and the Isle of Bute. The following week was eerily quiet across Scotland, the North of England and Northern Island. But the week beginning January 3 saw a resumption in normal business. Six people were rescued in a total flying time of 13 hours, with sorties including:


The transfer of a casualty who had fallen from a boat in Argyll to hospital in Kilmarnock; Flying a road traffic victim from Stirlingshire, at the


eastern limit of their ‘patch’ to hospital in Edinburgh; A search for two missing persons in Northern Ireland, the western limit on terra firma (their remit could take them hundreds of miles out into the Atlantic). Saturday January 8 saw the duty crew really


stretched, this time from north to south. At 1.40pm they answered a call to help Fort William police search for and rescue two climbers who had fallen on Ben Nevis, at the extreme north of their coverage area.


This was the first major mountain job with the unit


for aircrewman and paramedic Sgt Andy Dixon, on exchange from the RAF, and it wasn’t an easy one. On being winched down, he found the casualties


were both French and spoke no English. They were whisked from the mountain and into


the care of an ambulance and mountain rescue team doctor.


After three hours aloft they returned to Prestwick – but an hour later they were off to the southern margin of their territory, the Lake District. This time they were ready to pluck a climber


from Great End on the Scafell massif, but on arrival they found the Keswick mountain rescue team had managed to find and rescue him, and were able to return to base for a well-earned break. The hard-pressed crew at Gannet – the busiest SAR unit in the UK for the past two years – consisted of pilots Lt George ‘Logie’ Baird and Lt Andy Ellis, observer Lt Cdr Dave Reese and Sgt Andy Dixon RAF.


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