Air ambulance

Military

As with many innovations in Emergency Medical Service (EMS) the concept of transporting the injured by aircraft has its origins in the military. Air medical transport likely first occurred in 1870 during the Siege of Paris when 160 wounded French soldiers were transported by hot-air balloon to France.[1] The concept of using aircraft as ambulances is almost as old as powered flight itself. During the First World War air ambulances were tested by various military organizations. Aircraft were still primitive, with limited capabilities, and received mixed reviews. The exploration of the idea continued however, and by 1936, an organized military air ambulance service was evacuating wounded from the Spanish Civil War for medical treatment in Nazi Germany. The first dedicated use of helicopters by U.S. forces occurred during the Korean War during the period from 1950-1953. While popularly depicted as simply removing casualties from the battlefield (which they did) the use of helicopters also stretched to moving critical patients to more advanced hospital ships, once initial emergency treatment in field hospitals had occurred. The knowledge and expertise at the use of aircraft as ambulances continued to evolve, and by 1969, in Vietnam, the use of specially trained medical corpsmen and helicopters as ambulances led U.S. researchers to conclude that servicemen wounded in battle had better rates of survival than motorists injured on California freeways, and inspired the first experiments with the use of civilian paramedics in the world.[2] The use of military aircraft as battlefield ambulances continues to grow and develop today in a variety of countries, as does the use of fixed wing aircraft for long distance travel, including repatriation of the wounded.