Airborne Lifeboats Mk.III and IIA – In late 1942 Uffa Fox was working on ways to rescue downed aircrew at sea (in theory this could be down by something like a Catalina or Sunderland but these were not always available and other ways were sort). After discarding several other schemes he came up with the idea of a self contained air droppable lifeboat based on his dinghy designs. After air tests, the first test drop was made from a Hudson in Jan 1943.
The Navy requested a lifeboat which could be used with their Barracuda aircraft. The RN1 was necessarily smaller. There are no records of it ever having been used operationally.
The hull was built with ..
The lifeboat was dropped from a height of 700 feet (210 m), ..