"So Others May Live:" Dustoff/Medevac

Soldiers in the Vietnam War often fought in remote areas of the jungle, regularly encountering bad weather and guerilla attacks. Vehicles faced landmines, ambushes, and awful roads. All of these factors caused problems for the military medical corps. How would they transport the wounded safely and quickly to hospitals for proper medical care? They decided to revisit an idea from the Korean War: the helicopter ambulance, which became known as a Dustoff.

A Dustoff crew consisted of four people: two pilots, a medic and a crew chief, with one pilot acting as the navigator, radio operator and secondary pilot. Early in the war, the crews began the practice of accepting missions no matter what the situation: unsecured landing zone, bad weather, overworked crew, no gunship support, and enemy fire.

In most cases a soldier would be in a hospital within 35 minutes of being wounded, which reduced the death rate of American soldiers in the Vietnam War to almost in half of that from World War II. Soldiers knew that the Dustoff crews would come for them no matter what, and because of that dedication they knew they had a better chance in Vietnam of surviving a wound than in any previous war.