Brig Gen Brian McMahon:IN NOVEMBER 1963, Barney McMahon, who was then a commandant in the Irish Air Corps, and Lieut Kelly collected the Air Corps' first helicopters from Marseilles, two Alouette IIIs.
In less than a month, with their training incomplete, they were called out to the Connemara coast to search for the crew of a French fishing boat who had to abandon their vessel for inflatable life rafts.
“I suppose we were a bit bloody mad to be taking the mission on,” McMahon said afterwards.
“We had very limited communications and an atrocious radio which took the heads off us as we had no helmets. We had no life raft and 1916 life jackets.”
After having flown from Baldonnel, the helicopter had only a limited time to search for the crew before running short of fuel.
Realising they would not get back to Galway where there was a fuel supply, McMahon put his helicopter down outside Clifton in a handball alley.
From a surprised nearby garage, he got 120 gallons of petrol which was mixed with paraffin procured from the parish priest and then filtered through a woman’s pair of tights.
They were returning to the search when there was a message to say that the crew had been located and picked up by another fishing boat.
Brig Gen McMahon, who came from Doonbeg, Co Clare, was educated in St Flannen’s College in Ennis.
In 1949, he joined the Air Corps as a cadet and three years later qualified as a pilot; in 1962, he was the chief flying instructor at Gormanston and was chosen as the flight commander to set up the Air Sea Rescue Unit.
The Air Corps had started modestly with a biplane that had been purchased during the Anglo-Irish Treaty talks of 1921.
It was kept at Croydon so that if the talks failed, Michael Collins could escape to Ireland if the suspended warrant for his arrest should be reactivated.
With the establishment of the Defence Forces in 1924, the air service became the Air Corps and remained part of the Army until the 1990s.
In 1922 there were 10 aircraft and during the second World War, various belligerent aircraft that had been force-landed in Ireland had been acquired. After the war, the Hurricanes were replaced by Supermarine Seafires and a few two-seat Spitfire trainers. Eight years later, the first helicopters were purchased.
In the mid-1960s, the American first World War film, The Blue Max, was shot in Ireland; Baldonnel was used with the Air Corps providing crew and engineering staff together with various extras, including McMahon, who flew one of the aircraft.
The search and rescue unit had many successes including one for which McMahon was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for leadership, “a high degree of courage, exceptional flying skills and a disregard for personal safety”.
This was the occasion when he piloted the helicopter, in appalling weather conditions, that lifted a man with a broken leg from a cliff face at Glendalough.
To get in a position where the winch man could be lowered to the injured man, McMahon had to fly within 2ft of the rock face.
He was also honoured by the French government with the Order of Merit in recognition of his service in the promotion of co-operation between Ireland and France in the field of military aviation.
Perhaps McMahon’s most important achievement was the development of an air ambulance service, which was the first such service in Europe, for transporting patients with critical spinal injuries from hospitals countrywide to the National Rehabilitation Hospital.
He devised, with the help of the doctors, a special stretcher that could be carried in the modified helicopter and saw to it that there were helipads at or nearby all the hospitals.
McMahon continued operational flying up to 1970. He was then promoted to various administrative posts until he was appointed general officer commanding the Air Corps with the rank of brigadier general, a role he held from 1984-1989 when he retired.
In 1951, his cadet master had recommended him for a commission saying: “His energetic and enthusiastic approach to his work is bound to influence others.”
This assessment was franked by his subsequent career in the Air Corps and defined through his encouragement of pilots, engineers, winch men and winch operators whom he had gathered round him.
Although not a martinet, he was conscious of the principle and practice of military discipline.
He was predeceased by his wife Cecelia.
His son Declan died of a heart attack two days after the death of his father.
He is survived by his other son, Ciarán and by his two daughters Niamh and Aedín.
Brig Gen Brian L McMahon: born December 1st, 1928; died October 25th, 2010.