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

The last designation change occurred in December 1952, after efforts by Major General George E. Armstrong, Army Surgeon General, to establish a Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E) for helicopter evacuation units. His efforts created TO&E 5-500, Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance), and for the first time these helicopter units became medical units belonging to the Army Medical Service and under the full control to the Army Surgeon. The new designations were as follows: the 8190th Army Unit became the 37th Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance); the 8191st became the 49th Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance); the 8192nd became the 50th Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance); and the 8193rd became the 52nd Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance). In December 1952, the 54th and 56th Medical Detachments (Helicopter Ambulance) were activated in Korea, bringing the total of ambulance detachments in Korea to six.

Control of medical evacuation aircraft had what might be considered a convoluted command and control structure. Because the detachments were nonmedical units at the beginning of the conflict, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Helicopter Detachments were assigned to the 8085th Army Unit, which was the Eighth Army's flight detachment, attached to a MASH for administrative support, and under the operational control of the Eighth Army Surgeon. Later, when the Eighth Army was reorganized and I and IX Corps were established, operational control passed to the corps surgeons.

The month of June 1953 marked the activation of the lst Helicopter Ambulance Company (Provisional). The mission of this company was to provide tactical, administrative, and logistical support of the numbered helicopter ambulance detachments. Also on that day, the 1st Helicopter Ambulance Company (Provisional) was assigned to the 30th Medical Group, the agency responsible for all evacuation within the Eighth Army.

The Aircraft

The primary helicopter used in Korea for medical evacuation was the Bell H13D and the later improved E models. Although this aircraft was widely used, the principal reason was because it was the only helicopter provided to the Army Medical Service for evacuation purposes. The H13 resembled a grasshopper; it had a distinctive Plexiglas bubble canopy, an open lattice tailboom, with a fabric-coated wooden rotor blade that had a steel leading edge, which made the helicopter easily identifiable (Fig. 2). Comments about the aircraft made by two former pilots are as follows: Lieutenant Colonel John W. Hammett (USA Ret.) stated, "These H13s were good aircraft," and Colonel H.S. Gaddis (USA Ret.) declared the aircraft "sturdy and very reliable."

Despite these positive comments, the Bell H13 helicopter, which was originally designed as a small observation aircraft and not for combat evacuation, had its shortcomings. The first of these was that the patient was transported externally on the helicopter and the helicopter lacked instrument lights and gyroscopic altitude indicators. These shortcomings resulted in most missions taking place in daylight. Colonel Gaddis, Commander of the 49th Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance), stated, "Night operations had not been conducted on a routine scale due to lack of altitude instruments, total experience of aviators, and strict blackout conditions by varying distances behind the FEBA (forward edge of the battle area). As I gained operational experience in our respective area, I had a growing opinion, night operations were feasible. 116 Pilots who did complete night missions did so by flying with a flashlight held between their legs to illuminate the flight instruments. This barely worked, because the flickering beam of the flashlight often produced a blinding glare.