The Air Rescue Service (ARS) is a disestablished organization in the United States Air Force. Previously a subcommand of the Military Air Transport Service (MATS), a USAF major command (MAJCOM). ARS was redesignated as the Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service (ARRS) on 1 Jan 1966 when MATS was redesignated as the Military Airlift Command (MAC). As ARRS, it retained the same subcommand status with MAC.
The Air Rescue Service was initially established in 1946 under the Air Transport Command, just prior to the U.S. Air Force's designation as a separate service in 1947, and it continued to serve the U.S. Air Force proudly as both ARS and ARRS during the Korean War and Vietnam War, as well as during the Cold War. Rescue's worth was proven time and again: 996 combat saves in Korea and 2,780 in Southeast Asia. The crews, both fixed-wing and helicopter, had but one motto: "These things we do that others may live."
ARRS returned to its former name of ARS in 1989 and was disestablished in 1993, following the disestablishment of Military Airlift Command and the dispersal of legacy USAF search and rescue (SAR) forces among the Air Combat Command (ACC), the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) and Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), to include those Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC) and Air National Guard (ANG) rescue units operationally-gained by these MAJCOMs. The current structure and strength of search and rescue in today's U.S. Air Force is focused primarily on combat search and rescue (CSAR) and Personnel Recovery (PR) and is greatly reduced from the air rescue force structure that served from 1946 through the end of the Vietnam Era.
Read more about Air Rescue Service: Origins, Korea, Vietnam War, Post-Vietnam, Cold War, Operation Eagle Claw and Operation Desert Storm, Current Rescue & Guardian Angel Unit Designations
Famous quotes containing the words air, rescue and/or service:
“The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost—that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization—is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary!”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)