Aeromedical evacuation

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (February 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Aeromedical evacuation" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

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.^[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. 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.^[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 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.