Hosted by Gen. David N.H. Grant, one of the driving forces behind many innovations in medicine during WWII, this fascinating film describes how aircraft were used to rapidly evacuate wounded soldiers from the front so that they could receive hospital care quickly. The setting of the film is North Africa and in particular the forward air base at Maison Blanche in Algeria, where medical air evacuation teams deploy on a mission of mercy.
Even though during World War I the air ambulance made significant advancement, at the beginning of World War II many military authorities believed air evacuation of patients was not only dangerous, but also, medically unsound and militarily impossible. General David Grant’s, the first air surgeon of the Army air forces’, proposal for an air evacuation service was met with much opposition in the upper levels of the Army. However, Grant continued to push for an air evacuation system, and in June 1942 he succeeded. The first large-scale combat aeromedical evacuation of the war took place in New Guinea in August 1942. The Fifth Army air force evacuated more that 13,000 patients over 700 miles to Australia in a period of seven days because of an Allied counteroffensive against the Japanese.
By 1943, the Army Air Evacuation service had moved significant numbers of wounded soldiers by air transport. That year alone, over 173,500 casualties were air evacuated back to the United States. During the following year 1944, over 545,000 casualties were air evacuated, and in 1945 at the wars end, over 454,000 more soldiers were evacuated with a thre- year total of over one million. The new air evacuation doctrine showed that aeromedical evacuation was a new alternative. One key leader who was convinced of the importance of aeromedical evacuation was General Dwight D.Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. Weeks after D day, GeneralEisenhower stated, “We evacuated almost everyone from our forward hospitals by air,and it has unquestionably saved hundreds of lives–thousand of lives.”
This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2K. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
