Navy Rescue

History

Alongside the Air Force, the Navy ran its own fleet of 4×4s from the Gen 1 era onward: ship-to-shore liaison cars, dockyard utilities, bomb disposal wagons and - at the Royal Naval Air Stations of the Fleet Air Arm - airfield fire and rescue trucks. Naval shore vehicles wore a distinctive gloss dark blue with white ROYAL NAVY or RN lettering, and the rescue trucks added beacons, searchlights, winches and prominent RESCUE signage so they could race ahead of the heavier appliances to a crashed or ditched aircraft, a lineage that later ran through blue-and-red Gen 3 fire tenders to the shared Air Force/RN TACR crash trucks. SSK 357 is a preserved Gen 2 88in hard top presented in this Royal Naval rescue configuration: gloss dark navy with a white roof, an illuminated ROYAL NAVY RESCUE roof box, RN door lettering, amber beacon, twin wing-mounted searchlights, mesh lamp guards, twin spare wheels on the bonnet and a front-mounted winch rigged with rope.