Aeromedical evacuation

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
C-17 from Balad, Iraq to Ramstein, Germany
, in 2007
C-9 Nightingale formerly used for Aeromedical Evacuation

Aeromedical evacuation (AE) usually refers to the use of military transport aircraft to carry wounded personnel.

The first recorded

Sinai peninsula some 30 miles south of El Arish when a Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2c flew out a soldier in the Imperial Camel Corps who had been shot in the ankle during the raid on Bir el Hassana. The flight took 45 minutes; the same journey by land would have taken some 3 days.[1]

In the 1920s several aeromedical services, both official and unofficial, started up in various parts of the world. Aircraft were still primitive at the time, with limited capabilities, and the efforts received mixed reviews.

Development of the idea continued.

Somaliland, used an Airco DH.9A fitted out as an air ambulance. It carried a single stretcher under a fairing behind the pilot.[2] The French evacuated over 7,000 casualties during that period.[3] By 1936, an organized military air ambulance service evacuated wounded from the Spanish Civil War for medical treatment in Nazi Germany
.

The first use of

helicopters by U.S. forces occurred during the Korean War
, between 1950 and 1953.

United States

The first crude attempts at evacuating patients by air were made on biplanes in 1918. Shortly thereafter,

JN-4s and DH-4 bombers were modified by the Army Air Service for carrying litters. In 1921 the Curtiss Eagle was developed, the first aircraft designed specifically for the transport of patients. It was followed in 1925 by the XA-1, which could carry 2 litter patients and flight surgeon in a compartment behind the cockpit. Eventually Douglas C-1
transports were modified to carry up to 9 litter patients and were used on an opportune basis in the US and Panama. This led to a directive that all future military transports be equipped with brackets for carrying litters.

During

PB4Y aircraft to fly patients from remote Pacific islands to larger bases and on to stateside hospitals. By the war's end more than 1.3 million patients had been transported worldwide, with fewer than 60 inflight deaths.[citation needed
]

In the postwar era a system of intratheater evacuation was established in the US and Europe, with the establishment of the US Air Force in 1947 came the formation of the Military Air Transport Service (later Military Airlift Command and now Air Mobility Command) and a designation as the prime responsibility for the air evac mission.

During the

C-47s were then used to fly patients to large airfields where they were later transported on to Japan, Hawaii and the US by C-54 and also newer C-97, C-121 and C-124
which could carry up to 127 litters or a combination of up to 200 litter and ambulatory patients. By July 1953 310,000 patients had been transported both within and from the Korean peninsula.

In 1954 the Air Force received its first dedicated AE platform, the

C-9 Nightingale, a modified version of the DC-9 commercial airliner. A rapidly expanding system of regular air evacuation flights throughout the world was established and tactical evacuation from battlefield areas was improved by the addition of new transport aircraft such as the C-123 Provider and C-130 Hercules. The first Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard AE units were established in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Air Force entered the jet age in 1961 with the addition of the C-135 transport which was a military version of the 707 airliner; it could carry 44 litters and fly more than 30% faster than piston engine aircraft. Air Evac assets were used for humanitarian missions out of Lebanon and Hungary
during the 1950s.

The US entry into

C-54 aircraft, retrograde missions to Japan, The Philippines were flown using the newer C-141 transport which could carry up to 80 litters or a mix of 125 litter and ambulatory on non-stop routes to Alaska, California and the east coast. During the Vietnam War
more than half a million patients were transported.

An extensive peacetime network of air evacuation was established using C-9 aircraft based at Scott AFB, Illinois, Rhein-Main AB, Germany and Clark AB, PI augmented by older prop transports and more recently the C-141 on long-distance routes to and from the mainland US. During Operation Desert Storm thousands of wounded and injured were transported from Southwest Asia, while air evac assets were also used in Somalia, the Balkans and also for moving patients in the US during disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

The

Air Force Medical Service, but are usually aligned under an Operations Group instead of a Medical Group. Aeromedical evacuation usually involves medical transportation of active-duty military members, but in the past, AE also included a significant amount of transportation of military dependents requiring specialized care. Until recently, the U.S. Air Force had a number of specialized McDonnell Douglas C-9
"Nightingale" aircraft dedicated to aeromedical evacuation. These aircraft have now been retired from service.

Aeromedical evacuation was used to transport injured from the

Learjet C-21
. The medical crew is fully self-contained. They have their own oxygen and only need to plug into the aircraft's electrical system.

Since October 2001, more than 48,000 US military servicemen have been aeromedically evacuated during the Afghan and Iraqi wars for both battle and non-battle injuries.

Current U.S. Air Force AE units

Air Mobility Command

United States Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa

Pacific Air Forces

Air Forces Central Command

Air Force Reserve Command

Air National Guard

See also

References

Citations

  1. S2CID 25684014
    .
  2. ^ [1]Flight, 13 April 1956, p. 424.
  3. ^ "Lam, DM. Wings of Life and Hope: A History of Aeromedical Evacuation." Problems in Critical Care, 4(4): 477-494, December 1990.

Other sources

External links
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