The Flying Ambulance

Improvements in the Transport of the War Wounded: Circa 1792

“…3 This time gap, from the Wright Brothers flight until 1915, was despite the strong advocacy by some Army medical officers that the air plane should be used instead of the available road and rail facilities; the far sighted few being overruled by their opponents who maintained that the sick and wounded had already been exposed to great dangers without being placed in the newfangled flying machine. 4 It was not until 1917 that the Royal Air Force made their first aeromedical flight, taking an officer with a broken ankle across the Sinai desert to the hospital facility in 45 minutes, instead of the several days it would have taken by camel train. 5 Despite the demonstrations of the speed and improvement in treatment offered by the aeroplane, the evacuation of casualties by air did not become an accepted practice until the second war .…”