Nearly 500,000 Medevac Missions Flown During War

In May 2024 Congress passed the Dustoff Crews of the Vietnam War Congressional Gold Medal Act. It also passed the Senate and is awaiting President Biden’s signature to award the approximately 3,400 dustoff crew members who served between May 1962 through March 1973.

For those of a certain age who watched the nightly news coverage about the Vietnam War and daily casualty reports, the term “dustoff” was frequently heard being read by reporters on scene as video of daring rescue operations played on the television.

“Dustoff inbound” was what wounded troops most wanted to hear as they lay waiting for their rescue.

For those unfamiliar, a dustoff was when an unarmed UH-1 Huey helicopter air ambulance with a big red cross on the nose came to pick up the wounded to get them to a field hospital within the “golden hour” when the chances of survival were greatly increased.

The bipartisan bill to award the highest honor Congress can bestow was co-sponsored in the House by Reps. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.). The bill states that dustoff crews consisting of a pilot, co-pilot, crew chief, and combat medic, carried out “rapid medical evacuation and transported almost 900,000 U.S., South Vietnamese, and other allied sick and wounded as well as wounded enemy forces” during 11 years of operations in Vietnam.

Dr. Michael Mittelmann, a surgeon with the 8th Field Hospital in Nha Trang, in an oral history for the Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University, said that as a result of the dustoff missions, "we would see patients so much more quickly than had ever happened before in a war zone, where you couldn't depend on ambulance runs through rotten roads and muddy hills.”

FMI:  www.military.com/