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Concept
Aeromedical evacuation
Summary
Aeromedical evacuation (AE) usually refers to the use of military transport aircraft to carry wounded personnel.
The first recorded British ambulance flight took place in 1917 in the 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.
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. France and the United Kingdom used fully organized aeromedical evacuation services during the African and Middle Eastern colonial wars of the 1920s. In 1920, the British, while suppressing the "Mad Mullah" in Somaliland, used an Airco DH.9A fitted out as an air ambulance. It carried a single stretcher under a fairing behind the pilot. The French evacuated over 7,000 casualties during that period. 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 medevac with helicopters was the evacuation of three British pilot combat casualties by a US Army Sikorsky in Burma during WW2, and the first dedicated use of helicopters by U.S. forces occurred during the Korean War, between 1950 and 1953.
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.
Official source
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