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08 June 2018
The 34th Station Hospital, attached to the 12th Air Force on Pantelleria Island in the Mediterranean Sea from June 18 to Sept. 21, 1943, was the first station hospital attached to an Army Air Force Unit.
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22 May 2018
Air Force Medicine has changed significantly since 1986, when Lt. Gen. Mark Ediger left his family medicine practice in Missouri to join the Air Force. Ediger, the U.S. Air Force Surgeon General, retires June 1, after a 32-year career that took him around the world, through numerous postings and varied roles. Although Ediger rose to the highest position in Air Force Medicine, he says that was not his intended career path.
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09 May 2018
Verena M. Zeller, the first chief of the Air Force Nurse Corps, was promoted to lieutenant colonel in April 1950. Zeller led the Nurse Corps during the Korean War, overseeing its growth and evolution into an organization focused on flight care.
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08 May 2018
On May 8, 1918, U.S. Army Aviation Branch, Col. Theodore Lyster created the first ever course for flight surgeons, at the Medical Research Laboratory, Hazelhurst Field, N.Y.
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25 April 2018
Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) Day is a time to honor members and reflect on the
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15 March 2018
Evacuating patients injured in combat and transporting them to higher levels of care requires a team of trained medics with the capability to keep patients stable in-flight. The Air Force’s Aeromedical Evacuation system has been a staple of transporting wartime casualties since World War II.
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07 March 2018
During World War II, small fragments of high-explosive shells traveling at relatively low velocities caused the majority of bomber air and ground crew casualties.
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07 March 2018
Making its debut in August of 1968, the C-9A was the U.S. Air Force’s first specially designed aeromedical evacuation aircraft. The C-9A answered the increased demand for effective aeromedical patient transport as U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War escalated.
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26 February 2018
One of the most celebrated flight nurses of World War II, 1st Lt. Aleda E. Lutz flew 196 missions and evacuated more than 3,500 soldiers.
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22 February 2018
As a U.S. Air Force flight surgeon, Col. Yvonne Darlene Cagle wanted to fly even higher and fast. She had always wanted to leave her footprints in moon dust, a dream held since seeing Neil Armstrong do it on July 20, 1969. Twenty-seven years after Armstrong’s historic steps, Cagle herself became an astronaut.
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07 February 2018
Seventy-five years ago, on February 18, 1943, the School of Air Evacuation held its first formal flight nurse graduation. Organized at Bowman Field, Kentucky, on October 6, 1942, the school trained flight surgeons, flight nurses, and flight technicians to care for patients during aeromedical transport.
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25 January 2018
By the height of the Vietnam War in the late 1960’s, the U.S. Air Force had 1,900 medics conducting medical operations in Southeast Asia. The steady aeromedical evacuation and in-theater care performed by the Air Force Medical Service (AFMS) in Southeast Asia drove innovation and evolution in flight medicine and aeromedical evacuation.
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19 January 2018
In January 1943, 2nd Lt. Elsie S. Ott, a 29-year-old Army nurse with barely a year of military service, took on a mission to demonstrate the value and feasibility of aeromedical evacuation. Ott, serving in Karachi, in what was then India, was selected to escort five seriously ill patients from India to Walter Reed Hospital near Washington, DC.
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20 December 2017
A pioneer in flight medicine, Malcolm Grow was a strong proponent of an independent Air Force Medical Service. He was the first Air Force Surgeon General, when the AFMS came into existence in 1949. Grow was a pioneer of military medicine, and one of the earliest and most effective advocates for moving medicine out of the clinical, textbook setting, and responding to the real needs of warfighters.
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18 December 2017
The Air Force Medical Service (AFMS) became independent from the U.S. Army in 1949, just four years after the end of World War II. The Korean War, just a year later, was the first opportunity for the new medical arm of the U.S. Air Force to demonstrate its value in a wartime situation. Many of the lessons learned and process developed in that conflict are still vital to the AFMS mission today.
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08 December 2017
Seventy-six years after a date that will live in infamy, the 15th Wing hosted a December 7 Remembrance Ceremony in commemoration of the attack on Hickam Field, in 1941.
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07 December 2017
From the first moments of the attack until the close of the day, Hickam's small new hospital, which had opened only a few weeks before, was the focal point of activity on the base. Capt Frank H. Lane, the acting hospital commander, was an Army Air Forces flight surgeon who lived with his wife, Carmen, and their two sons in family housing located only a short distance from the Pearl Harbor boundary. He awoke shortly before 0800 that Sunday morning to take his family to church and had just finished dressing when he heard a loud explosion. His first thought was that one of the oil storage tanks on the hill just inland from Pearl Harbor had exploded. When he looked out the bedroom window, a cloud of black smoke in that direction seemed to confirm his guess.
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17 November 2017
Sixty years ago, in November 1957, Lackland Air Force Base dedicated its new, nine-story, 500-bed hospital, making it the largest hospital in the Air Force.
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26 October 2017
For more than 20 years, the Caribbean Air Command was one of the smallest Air Force Major Commands in terms of personnel and resources, although it effectively covered one of the largest geographical areas of operations in the world. Air Force Medical Service personnel were key players in the overall success of the mission and their legacy lives on.
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30 September 2017
Dr. Alexander “Rusty” Sloan never entertained the idea of becoming the Air Force Surgeon General. Throughout his career, Sloan even tried to avoid serving at the Pentagon; however, he excelled at every assignment, pushing him quickly up into the ranks and putting him on the path to becoming the 14th Air Force Surgeon General.
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21 September 2017
United States involvement in World War I began April 6, 1917. For the U.S. military, aviation medicine began in May 1917 when the U.S. Army appointed Lt. Col. (Dr.) Theodore C. Lyster, often called the father of aviation medicine, as the first service member dedicated to aviation-related medicine. Lyster’s assignment was to take charge of aviation work in the Surgeon General's Office.
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31 August 2017
Before Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Malcolm C. Grow became the first surgeon general of the U.S. Air Force, he
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31 August 2017
In the early days of World War II, Eighth Air Force Surgeon, Col. Malcolm C. Grow, grew concerned about the mental and physical well-being of aircrews within the command. To address these concerns, he first created a ‘Care of the Flyer’ section on his staff. Shortly thereafter, with the help of Col. Harry G. Armstrong, Grow stood up a medical research, development, and training facility in Great Britain to study additional ways to keep flyers in the air, eventually called the first Central Medical Establishment.
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30 August 2017
A team of medical technicians from the 96th Medical Group won the Emergency Medical Technician Rodeo at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico for the second consecutive year.
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18 August 2017
While deployed in support of Operation INHERENT RESOLVE, this Special Operations Surgical Team
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17 August 2017
Medical professionals from United States Special Operations Command and the 6th Medical Group are partnering to provide a new, noninvasive treatment for post-traumatic stress at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida.
The treatment uses Magnetic Electroencephalogram Resonance Therapy (MeRT,) which is a modified version of repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) and is currently being researched at the clinic.
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26 January 2017
Air Force Lt. Col. Helen M. Hennessey retired Jan. 31, 1967, after 27 years of military service.
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23 December 2016
On April 4, 1975, just a few weeks before the fall of Saigon and end of the Vietnam War, the first
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15 December 2016
The Dependents’ Medical Care Act, effective since Dec. 7, 1956, enabled dependents of military
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01 September 2016
Lt. Gen. (Dr.) Mark Ediger, the Air Force Surgeon General, passed command of the Air Force Medical