AIR TRANSPORT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 October 1943, Page 4

AIR TRANSPORT

OF MEN WOUNDED IN BATTLE FINE RECORD OF SUCCESS REPORTED. USE OF PARATROOP & OTHER MACHINES. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.25 a.m.) NEW YORK, October 22. More than a quarter of a million wounded and sick have been flown from American combat areas to hospitals in the last twenty months, Lieu-tenant-Colonel Richard Meiling, told the Military Surgeons’ Association. He added that special hospital planes were unnecessary, as paratroop and transport planes were carrying patients as return freight. Twenty-five thousand wounded in Africa and Sicily had been flown to hospital without accident, and with only one death en route. The secret of such success was specially trained air crews, comprising doctors, nurses and enlisted men. Planes relieved congestion on the military roads and conserved hospitals, trains and hospital ships. A new type of dressing for quick and safe control of external haemorrhages from wounds in any part of the body, which eliminated the need for the torniquet, was demonstrated at a meeting of the Military Surgeons’ Association. It is claimed that the dressing can be applied easily by persons with limited training.