Sea King Helicopters For Ukraine

Watching Sky News earlier this evening there was a short "snippet" that I happened to hear along the lines of "UK sending Search and Rescue helicopters to Ukraine.". I was surprised to see a photo of a Sea King helicopter shown at the same time as the last one retired from Royal Navy service a few years ago. Looking online, sure enough, apparently, the UK is supplying 3 Sea Kings to Ukraine and one has already arrived. It is interesting to know that, apparently, there were still some available capable of being made airworthy, reasonably easily one would presume.

It will be interesting to see if these aircraft are used solely for "search and rescue" as was suggested by Sky News for their intended use in Ukraine, or if more "creative" uses can also be found for them.

First Time! Britain Sending SeaKing Helicopters To Ukraine - YouTube

Practically an insult. Hard enough to maintain here; what about there? :rolleyes: Mere comic opera I suggest; if they ever get there they will probably be sold on to somewhere like India or Pakistan who might actually use such flying collectibles.

Still even with FTX a smoking hole in the ground, there must be a few kick-backs to be had still? Why let the American Democrats monopolize the candy jar? :D

I just wonder if they are Sea King AEW aircraft as they were among the last Sea Kings flying with the Royal Navy and would actually be quite useful to Ukraine despite the old airframes. So far we haven't seen any photos of the actual helicopters and so it's difficult to know what MK of Sea King have been sent.

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Originally Posted by Flying10uk

Watching Sky News earlier this evening there was a short "snippet" that I happened to hear along the lines of "UK sending Search and Rescue helicopters to Ukraine.". I was surprised to see a photo of a Sea King helicopter shown at the same time as the last one retired from Royal Navy service a few years ago. Looking online, sure enough, apparently, the UK is supplying 3 Sea Kings to Ukraine and one has already arrived. It is interesting to know that, apparently, there were still some available capable of being made airworthy, reasonably easily one would presume.

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Technically, while the Sea King had been retired from UK military service some years ago.....there was still two that remained airworthy and flying since then on the military register, and a third was later brought back to airworthy. These 3 could be seen on a regular basis flying during the past 5 or so years around the south coast, being operated by HeliOps in Portland who have been operating 3 x ex-RN Mk.5's on the military register under a contract to train German Marineflieger SAR aircrews for a good few years, who still operate the Sea King and that contract ended a short while ago, but they were then contracted by UK Govt to train Ukraine crews as a follow-on, and its these 3 x airworthy Sea Kings that are being donated to Ukraine. They were already airworthy and flying, they weren't made airworthy just for Ukraine.
HeliOps have a huge hangar full of Sea-Kings and pretty much the entire store of ex-MOD parts supply for them.

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Originally Posted by GeeRam

Technically, while the Sea King had been retired from UK military service some years ago.....there was still two that remained airworthy and flying since then on the military register, and a third was later brought back to airworthy. These 3 could be seen on a regular basis flying during the past 5 or so years around the south coast, being operated by HeliOps in Portland who have been operating 3 x ex-RN Mk.5's on the military register under a contract to train German Marineflieger SAR aircrews for a good few years, who still operate the Sea King

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Yes I was aware of these few privately operated Sea Kings but didn't realise that they were the ones being donated to Ukraine.

In personally think that Rob, Surpmil was being quite unkind. Sorry Rob..... At least we GAVE them three PLUS spares AND instruction on repair and maintenance prior to handover. And if just one of these grand old war-horses can deliver a good supply of ammo - or Milan or better still Javelin (they are good weight-lifters to a forward artillery unit, thel all the better.

And if one can recover 10 casualties to the rear RAP's or MH's, it was well worth it I say

Your reproofs will always be accepted in good part Peter! :D

Hopefully someone on the Sceptered Isle got a nice kickback, or at least a whopping tax credit. :lol:

The Sea King is probably the only medium sized military helicopter that we have available and could spare to donate to Ukraine. It will be interesting to see how they perform and if any more than the 3 end up there.

As a little aside, as I understand it, the large unidentified Casualty clearing Station and the Field Hospital are UK supplied too