Although politically a failure, militarily, and particularly for the Navy, the Suez episode was a huge success. 845 NAS were involved in landing 515 Marines and 89 tons of equipment in history's 'first vertical assault'. Several aircraft were damaged from small arms fire, with one ditching on the way back to "Theseus". Thankfully, all survived. The lessons of the Suez Crisis were not lost on the Government, which set about establishing amphibious forces capable of rapid deployment and response. The backbone of these forces would be helicopters operating from large ships designed for amphibious warfare.