|
JOHN “JACK” BAINES, who has died aged 57, was an outstanding RAF Mountain Rescue team leader.
Mountain rescue is gruelling and sometimes distressing work. The RAF MR team claims to be the only mountain emergency service that turns out in all weathers. Each leader - a flight sergeant or sergeant - is in charge of a team of all ranks from wing commander to aircraftman. From 1963 to 1978 Baines was one of the service’s best team leaders.
During the run-up to the service’s withdrawal from Hong Kong in the 1960’s Baines led RAF Kai Tak mountain rescue team. The civilian authorities wanted mountain rescue to continue, and the task was given to the Civil Aid Services, originally formed to organise air raid precautions during the Second World War.
Baines oversaw the handover and then, on detachment, led the training of the CAS personnel by the RAF. The connection has continued to this year, but is now likely to cease.
John Baines was born in 1938 at Preston and went to the Grammar School there. By the time he joined the RAF at 18, he had already climbed in the Lake District, exploring the Langdales.
He later claimed that he joined the RAF specifically to become part of its celebrated Mountain Rescue Service. But initially he was kept well away from the hills, and one of his early postings was to Germany. Undeterred, he joined local climbers in the evenings, and scaled the face of a nearby quarry.
He was posted back to Britain, and after a time in Suffolk was sent to RAF Kinloss and Leuchars, both of which have mountain rescue teams. He was involved with some major search-and-rescue operations, but one of the most interesting incidents was when he was sent on to the moors near Ardgay, leading a party to investigate a strange device which a shepherd had described.
Cynics were inclined to blame the man’s account on an overdose of the local malt, though others had a theory that it was a crashed Wellington bomber from the war.
To everyone’s astonishment, the object turned out to be a Soviet Sputnik that had come to grief.
Mountain rescue apart, Baines had a full mountaineering career. While at Kai Tak, for instance, he went to New Guinea with Dick Isherwood to climb a new route on Carstenz Pyramid.
After retiring from the RAF in 1978, Baines opened a mountaineering bookshop in North Wales.
He also helped to found a mountaineering publishing house, the Ernest Press, which won the Boardman Tasker Award for mountaineering literature in successive years.
He was appointed BEM in 1979, for services to mountain rescue. He was a founder member of the RAF Mountain Rescue Association.
Jack Baines married, in 1963, Patricia MacPherson; they had three daughters.
|
