| A Brief History of Aeromedical Helicopters |
II. --- A year later (January 15, 1945), a Bell Model 30 (the prototype of the Bell 47) was used by Floyd Carlson to fly a doctor to a farm house in Western New York. The doctor treated a Bell aviator (Chief Pilot Jack Woollams) suffering frostbite after bailing out of his crippled P-59 Airacomet jet.
II. --- A Sikorsky YR-4 was dismantled at Wright Field (Dayton, Ohio) on January 17, 1945, loaded on a C-54 transport, and flown to the North Burma theater of operations. It was quickly reassembled and, on January 26, 1945, Capt. Frank Peterson, AAF flew it to evacuate a wounded weather observer (Pvt. Howard Ross) from a 4,700 foot mountain ridge in the Naga hills of Burma.
II. --- A month later (late April, 1945), the first large scale rescue occurred when the US Army and US Coast Guard teamed up to rescue nine downed Canadian airmen. Lt. August Kleisch, USCG flew a R-4 that had been airlifted to the area to extricate these men from snow drifts 180 miles south of Goose Bay, Labrador.
On November 29, 1945, Sikorsky test pilot Jimmy Viner and Capt. Jackson Beighle, AAF (acting as hoist operator) used a R-5 with a new hydraulic hoist to lift two men from a large barge breaking apart in a storm on Penfield Reef (off of Bridgeport, Conn). This effort, made in heavy rain and sixty mile per hour winds, marked the first use of a helicopter hoist to lift men from peril.This photo, from the Igor I. Sikorsky Historical Archives, Inc. web site, shows one of the barge's crew being lowered to the beach - the barge can be seen in the distant background.
| Wounded Mortality by Conflict | ||
|---|---|---|
Army Medevac:  Korean ConflictUS Army photo |
||
| Conflict | Time to Care | Mortality |
| World War I | 12 to 18 hours | 8.8 % |
| World War II | 6 to 12 hours | 5.8 % |
| Korea (w/ Helo) | 2 to 4 hours | 2.4 % |
| Vietnam (w/ Helo) | 1 to 1.4 hours | 1.7 % |
The Korean conflict was the arena for the first, large scale demonstration of using helicopters as a tool to save lives. The US Army's use of medevac helicopters during this conflict facilitated a dramatic reduction in the battlefield mortality of wounded admitted to treatment facilities. Specifically, the elapsed time from injury to care was reduced to a range of two to four hours with a resulting overall mortality rate of 2.4% (less than half of WW II's rate).
Vietnam's "Dustoff" medevacs, the Army's refinement and expansion of the Korean experience, resulted in soldiers injured in the field being delivered to definitive surgical care within one to one hour and twenty one minutes. Mortality during this conflict was further reduced to 1.7 %. A key consideration of the latter two combat situations was the ability of field commanders to quickly evacuate their wounded directly to advanced surgical care facilities.
 HELP-Philadelphia area-1965 Source: unknown |
Some examples of these early efforts were the use of military helicopters in Belgium in 1963 and the 1965 Philadelphia project called Helicopter Emergency Lifesaving Patrol - or H.E.L.P.. The H.E.L.P. effort was unique in that it coupled doctors and medical personnel from Lankenau Hospital with the Atlantic Refining Company's "Go Patrol" traffic copter to provide its services to the Delaware Valley area. |
| Many consider the "Grandfather" of all of the world's services to be the Swiss Air Rescue Association - or REGA. The Swiss started using a piston powered helicopter for limited medical use in 1952 and, in 1968, added turbine powered ships to better serve their mountainous terrain. In late 1967, Superior Ambulance Service in Westland, Michigan started a commercial helicopter ambulance service using a Bell Ranger 47-J to support local hospitals. |  Superior Ambulance-Ann Arbor,MI area-1967 Bell Helo photo |
 MAST - Texas - 1970 US Army photo |
In 1969, the Maryland State Police, in conjunction with the University of Maryland, began a police / rescue / ambulance service covering their entire state. In Europe, a major, nation-wide service was begun in 1970 in the Federal Republic of Germany. This service, the German Air Rescue Service, is often referred to as ADAC. During the same year (1970), the United States Departments of Defence and Transportation began a pilot program called Military Assistance To Safety and Traffic - or MAST. The first implementation occurred at the US Army's Fort Sam Houston in Texas. |
Two years later (October, 1972), St. Anthony hospital in Denver, Colorado began "Flight for Life", the first dedicated, hospital-based service. Flight for Life was the model for what ultimately became the largest "type of service" in the world today.
