Combat search and rescue

Combat search and rescue (CSAR) are search and rescue operations that are carried out during war that are within or near combat zones.

A CSAR mission may be carried out by a task force of helicopters, ground-attack aircraft, aerial refueling tankers and an airborne command post. The USAF HC-130, which was introduced in 1965, has served in the latter two roles.

The First World War was the background for the development of early combat search and rescue doctrine, especially in the more fluid theaters of war in the Balkans and the Middle East.

In the opening fluid stages of the First World War the Royal Navy Air Service Armoured Car Section was formed with armed and armoured touring cars to find and pick up aircrew who had been forced down. When trench warfare made this impossible the cars were transferred to other theatres, most notably the Middle East.

In 1915, during the First World War, Squadron Commander Richard Bell-Davies of the British Royal Naval Air Service performed the first combat search and rescue by aircraft in history. He used his single-seat aeroplane to rescue his wingman who had been shot down in Bulgaria. His Victoria Cross citation included "Squadron-Commander Davies descended at a safe distance from the burning machine, took up Sub-Lieutenant Smylie, in spite of the near approach of a party of the enemy, and returned to the aerodrome, a feat of airmanship that can seldom have been equalled for skill and gallantry." Like the search and rescue efforts of the future, Davies' action sprang from the fervent desire to keep a compatriot from capture or death at the hands of the enemy.

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