DARTMOOR Rescue Group, police from Tavistock, ambulance crews and an RAF helicopter beat difficult weather conditions to rescue a group of youngsters on the moor on Tuesday evening.

The group of students and their supervisors from Barnfield College in Luton called for help after one member of the group injured his leg.

Bud Francis, controller of Tavistock DRG, said the weather conditions were too bad for the police helicopter to fly into the area, between Rough Tor and Two Bridges, and the force called his rescue section in to assist at about 5pm.

Mr Francis said: ?Finding them wasn?t a problem, it was getting them off the moor, because of the difficult weather, the number of them and the light.

?By the time we were called, one of the party had gone down with hypothermia.?

Mr Francis said there was ?no criticism? of the group ? they were well supervised and ?did all the right things?.

?We got them off in a variety of ways, some in LandRovers, but then one of our group, who was taking off the casualty with hypothermia, broke a leg crossing a river, so I decided we needed the assistance of one of the search and rescue helicopters from Chivenor,? he said.

Mr Francis said the rescue, which included search dogs, took around seven hours to complete.

The DRG member who broke his leg, Terry Bumford of Tavistock, and the injured student were airlifted to hospital in Barnstaple.

A police spokesman said: ?The group were well supervised and extremely well equipped. Had they not been so, then we could have been looking at more casualties.?