Army & Navy – OPERATIONS: Sulfa, Plasma–and Air

The scope of the job that U.S. air ambulances are now doing was sketched last week in cold figures:

¶ 173,527 ill and wounded soldiers,* most of them Americans, were evacuated by U.S. military planes last year, with only eleven deaths during flight.

¶ 3,260 of the wounded were serious emergency cases, flown from war theaters direct to the U.S. for fuller treatment.

¶ Number of cases evacuated by air from major fronts: 70,808 from New Guinea, 58,479 from Tunisia, Sicily and Italy, 24,767 from the Solomons.

Said Air Surgeon Major General David N. W. Grant: “Air evacuation . . . has contributed considerably to the tactical success of every major land offensive involving American forces. It has reduced the need for hospitalization in forward areas. . . . The record places air evacuation in a group with the sulfa drugs and blood plasma as one of the three greatest lifesaving measures of modern military medicine.”

*The total includes the sick as well as the wounded, and patients who were moved more than once by air, thus does not jibe with casualty totals.