AIR-SEA RESCUE SERVICE

Southland Times, Issue 24650, 23 January 1942, Page 5

AIR-SEA RESCUE SERVICE

Valuable Work In

Malay

(8.0.W.) RUGBY, January 21. Formed a fortnight after the outbreak of the war in the Pacific, the AirSea Rescue Service in Malaya has already performed several notable feats of rescue work, says the Air Ministry news service. A shallow draught marine tender has twice rescued pilots who had to bale out and had reached an island near Singapore. On one occasion no news had been received for some hours of British pilots shot down over a Dutch island south of Malaya. The tender was the

only craft capable of exploring the shallow waters around the islands and the creeks which cut across them. The tender’s crew landed and found a Dutch armed party searching for the crashed pilot, who, they believed, was Japanese. From other settlers the crew learned that the' pilot had been found and taken to hospital by a British planter who had organized a party of 200 and had found the pilot after an 11 hours’ search in the jungle.

On another occasion the tender rescued a pilot from shallow waters off the east coast of Singapore after half an hour’s immersion. Another pilot landed in the sea and swam to two islands, which he found uninhabited, and then, almost exhausted, swam to a third island where he persuaded the local Chinese to take him to another island with which the Air-Sea Rescue Service was in telephonic communication. Chinese similarly rescued a flight-lieutenant, who crashed on a reef after shooting down a Japanese plane in flames. The Air-Sea Rescue Service maintains a 24-hour watch. Calls for help are handled immediately. The service is divided into two branches—aerial and marine. The sea fleet carried a full crash kit and medical equipment, and the crews are trained in first-aid. The non-commissioned officer in charge is always a first-class coxswain.