What I love about the default Bash Crtl-C behaviour is that once a command has been located, the bash history is moved to the history of that command, until Enter is pressed.

  $ a
  bash: a: command not found
  $ b
  bash: b: command not found
  $ c
  bash: c: command not found
  $ d
  bash: d: command not found
  $ <CTRL-R> b <UP>
  $ a

That's great if I don't remember which command I was experimenting with, but I do know other commands that I did around that time (usually a file that I edited with VIM).