Global Peacetime Transition

A fire suppression kit is being attached to this HH-43B in preparation for a simulated Local Base Rescue operation, Luke AFB, AZ, 1961.

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Global Peacetime Transition

Air Force pararescuemen flank Astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and David R. Scott, sitting in the Gemini 8 space craft, while awaiting the arrival of the recovery ship, the USS Leonard F. Mason after splashdown in the Pacific Ocean March 16, 1966, in the Philippine Sea. Reservists from the 920th Rescue Wing at Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., provide first-response contingency medical and rescue support for all NASA shuttle launches. With the advent of the NASA's new capsule-based, manned-spaceflight program, Constellation, Air Force pararescuemen will once again greet astronauts on the high seas following splashdown. (NASA photo)

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Global Peacetime Transition

Following the Korean and First Indochina Wars, the Air Rescue Service (ARS) switched from a wartime posture to a global search and rescue (SAR) service.

Maintaining their primary objective of saving lives and Air Crew Recovery (ACR), the first National SAR Plan of March 1956 added the responsibility of rescue within the United States.

In 1958, an ARS directive stated that “no special units or specially designed aircraft will be provided for the sole purpose of wartime search and rescue,” leaving the ARS woefully unprepared for future wartime needs.

Later that year, ARS began to support NASA and Air Force space and missile recovery programs, beginning with the Mercury Program. Additionally, in 1960, the Air Rescue Service assumed the Local Base Rescue (LBR) program involving rescue services in the vicinity of local air bases.

Air Force restructuring and budget cuts also reduced the ARS from 7,900 people to 1,600 and from fifty squadrons to just eleven.

Click here to return to Search and Rescue in Southeast Asia(SAR in SEA)

Click here to the Southeast Asia War Gallery

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