History of Air Ambulance

The birth of air ambulance services came during wartime, but it’s not the aircraft you might expect.  The earliest recorded air evacuations were the rescue of 160 soldiers by hot air balloons during the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 in Paris.  Thankfully, the aircrafts of today have evolved into precise and lightning fast birds.  One of the driving forces behind air ambulances was a French woman by the name of Marie Marvingt.  She was a daring woman who dressed as a man so she could fight on the front lines of war. Marvingt was the first woman to pilot a hot air balloon across the English Channel and the North Sea, and the third woman in the entire world to get her fixed-wing pilot’s license.  In 1912, Marvingt began devoting her time and energy into developing a suitable air ambulance program.
It wasn’t until World War I that the United States began using airplanes to transport injured soldiers from the battlefield, but even then, the U.S. Army did not have a plane designed for medical transports.  What the Army found was that their aircrafts couldn’t fit stretchers and the injured were exposed to the elements if they rode in the open-air cockpits.  It was time to head to the drawing board.
By the end of WWI, the Army had plans for a makeshift air ambulance, but even then, the converted rear cockpit could only fit one person.  After the war ended, both government and non-government air ambulance services began to take off.  The Korean War was the first time the U.S. used dedicated helicopters as an air ambulance service.  Today, the government regularly uses air ambulances during battle, and non-governmental agencies are available all across the America to serve the public during crisis situations.

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