New York chapter history of Military Medicine Award: U.S. Army Medical helicopters in the Korean War

Military Medicine, Apr 2001 by Driscoll, Robert S

U.S. Army Medical Helicopters in the Korean War

Medical evacuation helicopters are taken for granted in today's military. However, the first use of helicopters for this purpose in the Korean War was not done intentionally but as a result of the necessity of moving patients rapidly over difficult Korean terrain and of the early ebbing of the main battle line. The objective of this essay is to increase the historical awareness of military medical evacuation helicopters in the Korean War during this 50th anniversary year. By describing the many challenges and experiences encountered in implementing the use of helicopters for evacuation, the reader will appreciate how a technology developed for another use helped in the success of evacuating nearly 22,000 patients while contributing to establishing a mortality rate of wounded of 2.41/6. The preparation to write this essay included archival research of historical reports, records, and oral histories from the archives of the U.S. Army Center for Military History. Additionally, a search of journal articles written during and after the Korean War was conducted. The result is a comprehensive description of the use of medical evacuation helicopters in the Korean War.

Introduction

In Korea, the use of helicopters as ambulances became necessary as a result of several factors involving the tactical landscape, such as the ruggedness of the land and poor roads. The roads that existed were insecure, narrow, poorly graded, and full of hairpin turns in the mountains. This slow traveling doubled patient transport time, leading to the edict, "A man dies in a period of time, not over a distance of miles." These obstacles demanded an improved means of moving patients from forward battalion aid stations to Army hospitals. The perfect vehicle for this was the helicopter, because it would not be impeded by any earth-bound problems. However, helicopters in the 1950s were not equipped for this mission, and there was no doctrine to prescribe their use; therefore, each of these challenges needed to be overcome to devise a responsive and coherent evacuation vehicle and system. The stage was set, and the helicopter entered the evacuation scene, delivering patients to surgeons for lifesaving procedures.

This historical essay is to commemorate and describe this significant technological and doctrinal advancement in military medicine as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War. Although the Korean War led to many advances in military medicine, the Army Medical Service had not seen such a revolutionary advancement in field medical evacuation since Jonathan Letterman created an evacuation system to clear the battlefield during the Civil War. This is the story of medical evacuation that changed battlefield care forever.

Early Advances

Ten years after World War I, the first rotary-wing aircraft was brought to the United States from France; the aircraft was called an autogiro, which used one motor-driven propeller for forward motion and another wind-driven propeller for vertical lift. Then, "in 1936 the Medical Field Service School at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, tested the medical evacuation abilities of the autogiro. Though the results were promising, budgetary problems prevented funding a rotary wing medical evacuation unit."1

During World War II, medical evacuation continued to be accomplished by fixed-wing aircraft; however, the war stimulated further research on rotary-wing aircraft. "On April 20, 1942, Igor Sikorsky staged a successful flight demonstration of his helicopter. By March 1943 the Army had ordered thirty-four Sikorsky helicopters."2 These aircraft could be quickly converted to air ambulance use by attaching litters to the sides of the aircraft.

On April 23, 1944, Lieutenant Carter Harmon, one of the first Army Air Force pilots trained by Sikorsky Aircraft Company, flew one of his unit's new Sikorskys to pick up a stranded party with casualties 25 km west of Mawlu, Burma. When he returned from that flight, he was recorded as completing the first U.S. Army helicopter medical evacuation mission. Although this event was significant, most evacuations from the front lines in World War II were by conventional ground ambulance.

Between World War II and the Korean War, only occasional use was made of helicopters for medical evacuation. There were no organized aeromedical evacuation units largely because of the absence of the stimulus of active combat. In essence, air evacuation was limited to that provided by the Air Force located near or adjacent to Army troop concentrations.

Organization and Control

Soon after the outbreak of hostilities in Korea on June 25, 1950, the U.S. Air Force 3rd Air Rescue Squadron (Helicopter), whose mission was air-crash rescue, began to receive requests from Army units to evacuate patients. This need for helicopter evacuation was in response to the difficult terrain in Korea for Army ground vehicles and the lack of the Army's introduction of the helicopter into the Korean theater. The demand became so great that by August 1950, the 3rd Air Rescue Squadron found itself in the medical evacuation business (Fig. 1).