The enormous rapid demobilization occurring during the period from May 1945 (VE Day) through September 1947 had severe impact on the Army Air Force as it determined what unit types and how many of each unit type were essential for the security of the United States. This situation was further complicated by extensive funding cutbacks causing decisions to reduce, eliminate, and/or consolidate training programs.
The situations imposed by demobilization and funding cutbacks had a detrimental impact on the training provided to prepare Flight Surgeons and enlisted medics for parachute rescue duties. An undesirable result of compromised training programs is the presence of complacency and ineptitude was increasing until the training programs for parachute rescue team duties were reinvigorated in 1947.
Two rescue missions that occurred in 1947 had the most influence in reinvigorating these training programs.
The first was the May 1947 Nicaraguan mission accomplished by Flight Surgeon Captain Pope Holliday. This mission was instrumental for the June 1947 official go-head approval given to HQ Air Rescue Service to start forming parachute rescue teams.
The second was the tragic December 1947 death of a flight surgeon and two enlisted medics who parachuted to the B-29, Clobbered Turkey crash site 95 miles north of Nome Alaska on 28 December 1947. This avoidable tragic loss of life exposed how much the training of flight surgeons and enlisted medics for the complexities of arctic parachute rescue missions had deteriorated since September 1945.
The aftereffects of the Clobbered Turkey mission contributed to the Air Rescue Service becoming the training provider for all personnel assigned to parachute rescue teams. Additionally, this mission contributes to Headquarters Air Rescue Service’s request of January 1947 for approval of a Specification Serial Number (SSN) identifying enlisted Parachute Rescue Team duty assignments (SSN 3883) being approved and authorized no later than June 1948.
Obscured in historical records during the period from 1945 to 1947 a multitude of domestic and international factors influenced the future development of and need for a unique enlisted combat rescue-survival-medic occupation specialty detached from the status of medical personnel in armed conflict.
The easiest to reveal and most applicable international political influences are the core principles permitting international civil transport by air. The general principles and application of the provisions of these principles, known as the “Chicago Agreement”
Several provisions of the Chicago Agreement address aerial search and rescue operations during times of peace which are closely intertwined in several articles of the “Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949.
Both international agreements every state has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory and territorial sea. This airspace sovereignty imposes complications in state aircraft (military) whether unarmed or armed doing unscheduled peacetime civil humanitarian search and rescue missions over or closely adjacent to airspace of other states (countries).
Articles of Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 codify aerial combat search and rescue operations as being a combatant activity and puts the use of medical personnel of being a potential breech undermining the protected status of medical personnel, medical units, and aircraft displaying medical emblems (Red Cross). While not absolutely prohibiting the use of medical personnel for SAR in denied, hostile, or sensitive areas or areas under enemy or unfriendly control there is clear assertion medical personnel used in these areas for SAR purposes lose their protected status as they are not performing humanitarian duties but are considered performing duties harmful to the enemy.
Meanwhile in 1945 increasing Soviet polar explorations coupled with menacing political actions and highly active espionage activities establishes the existence of undeclared war being waged that is known as the Cold War. Driven by concerns of a potential polar invasion led by a Soviet (Russian) nuclear armed bomber force posed a viable threat to Canadian and American cities, bases, industries including Western Europe classified manned reconnaissance missions (August 1945) undertaken to protect the security of the United States began being flown to monitor and record Soviet military activity in northern and eastern Siberia, the Bering Sea, Kamchatka Peninsula and the Polar Regions.
Air Staff postwar plans for continuous long-range Polar missions led to creating the Air Rescue Service in May 1946, then assigned to the Military Air Transport Service.
Additionally, the newly established Air Rescue Service was given administrative and technical control for all rescue-survival training programs passed from the Emergency Rescue School, 2121st AAF Base Unit (disbanded April 1946), the specialized Arctic Rescue-Survival training program passed from RCAF Station Namao to 62nd AAF Base Unit 1 December 1945, (July 1946), the AAFSAT Aeromedical School Jungle Survival training program, and the passing of the Second Air Force’s smoke jumper training arrangement with the U.S. Forest Service to the Air Rescue Service.
Aligning all these survival programs under the Air Rescue Service allowed the training of methods of survival in all environments and climate conditions. The medical training programs for detached duties and assignments to parachute rescue teams remained aligned under the School of Aviation Medicine. By 1948 a 210-hour Para-Rescue Medical Aid Course (also known as Rescue-Survival Medical Aid Course) had been developed and implemented.
To effectively provide long range rescue in the polar region and areas adjacent to Soviet territories the Air Rescue Service requested in a letter dated 5 February 1947 the approval to establish cohesive fully qualified parachute rescue teams composed of one medical officer (flight surgeon), one medical technician (SSN 861-surgical or SSN 409-medical) and two other enlisted personnel with training in first aid.
Very quickly the time consumed in training and funding the training for enlisted assigned to parachute rescue teams had become sufficiently problematic that the Air Rescue Service found the necessity to generate the request for establishing and authorizing a Specification Serial Number (SSN) be to identify to an enlisted generalist but also specialized merged rescue-survival-medic occupation code designation for assignment to its parachute rescue teams. This SSN request appears to have been approved in December 1947 in conjunction with the 15 December 1947 implementation of the Pararescue and Survival School, 5th Air Rescue Squadron, MacDill AFB, Florida of the Air Rescue Service. If not this request was certainly approved no later than June 1948.
The procedure for requesting a new SSN code or Military Occupation Specialty Code required an extensive occupational analysis to include training required. This analysis had consultant input from the original para doctors remaining in service after the Post Second World War demobilization and current para doctors of the Air Rescue Service.
There is also the fortuitous happenstance of one of the consultants, Donald Flickinger, during the period 1947 through 1949 being assigned to the School of Aviation Medicine first as chief of the department of internal medicine, then as director of research, and finally as director of medical sciences.
Coincidentally, there is the additional happenstance of the Air Rescue Service during the period from 1 December 1946 to 9 July 1952 being commanded by Colonel Richard T. Kight. His war time service included him being Chief of Staff and Director of Hump Operations, India China Division, Air Transportation Command during the period 31 December 1942 through 5 December 1943.
During this assignment Colonel Kight certainly had detailed knowledge of the parachute rescue accomplished by Flight Surgeon Lt. Col. Donald (Don) Davis Flickinger, and enlisted medics Sgt Richard S. Passey, and Cpl William Mackenzie on 2 August 1943. Further, it is likely he was involved in approving the 25 October 1943 activation of the first air rescue unit (Blackie’s Gang) providing search and rescue services on a 24-hour basis in a military contested environment. Convention on International Civil Aviation done at Chicago on the 7th day of December 1944.
Meanwhile in 1945 increasing Soviet polar explorations coupled with menacing political actions and highly active espionage activities establishes the existence of undeclared war being waged that is known as the Cold War. Driven by concerns of a potential polar invasion led by a Soviet (Russian) nuclear armed bomber force posed a viable threat to Canadian and American cities, bases, industries including Western Europe classified manned reconnaissance missions (August 1945) undertaken to protect the security of the United States began being flown to monitor and record Soviet military activity in northern and eastern Siberia, the Bering Sea, Kamchatka Peninsula and the Polar Regions.
Air Staff postwar plans for continuous long-range Polar missions led to creating the Air Rescue Service in May 1946, then assigned to the Military Air Transport Service.
Additionally, the newly established Air Rescue Service was given administrative and technical control for all rescue-survival training programs passed from the Emergency Rescue School, 2121st AAF Base Unit (disbanded April 1946), the specialized Arctic Rescue-Survival training program passed from RCAF Station Namao to 62nd AAF Base Unit 1 December 1945, (July 1946), the AAFSAT Aeromedical School Jungle Survival training program, and the passing of the Second Air Force’s smoke jumper training arrangement with the U.S. Forest Service to the Air Rescue Service.
Aligning all these survival programs under the Air Rescue Service allowed the training of methods of survival in all environments and climate conditions. The medical training programs for detached duties and assignments to parachute rescue teams remained aligned under the School of Aviation Medicine. By 1948 a 210-hour Para-Rescue Medical Aid Course (also known as Rescue-Survival Medical Aid Course) had been developed and implemented.
To effectively provide long range rescue in the polar region and areas adjacent to Soviet territories the Air Rescue Service requested in a letter dated 5 February 1947 the approval to establish cohesive fully qualified parachute rescue teams composed of one medical officer (flight surgeon), one medical technician (SSN 861-surgical or SSN 409-medical) and two other enlisted personnel with training in first aid. Very quickly the time consumed in training and funding the training for enlisted assigned to parachute rescue teams had become sufficiently problematic that the Air Rescue Service found the necessity to generate the request for establishing and authorizing a Specification Serial Number (SSN) be to identify to an enlisted generalist but also specialized merged rescue-survival-medic occupation code designation for assignment to its parachute rescue teams. This SSN request appears to have been approved in December 1947 in conjunction with the 15 December 1947 implementation of the Pararescue and Survival School, 5th Air Rescue Squadron, MacDill AFB, Florida of the Air Rescue Service. If not this request was certainly approved no later than June 1948. The procedure for requesting a new SSN code or Military Occupation Specialty Code required an extensive occupational analysis to include training required. This analysis had consultant input from the original para doctors remaining in service after the Post Second World War demobilization and current para doctors of the Air Rescue Service. There is also the fortuitous happenstance of one of the consultants, Donald Flickinger, during the period 1947 through 1949 being assigned to the School of Aviation Medicine first as chief of the department of internal medicine, then as director of research, and finally as director of medical sciences.
Coincidentally, there is the additional happenstance of the Air Rescue Service during the period from 1 December 1946 to 9 July 1952 being commanded by Colonel Richard T. Kight. His war time service included him being Chief of Staff and Director of Hump Operations, India China Division, Air Transportation Command during the period 31 December 1942 through 5 December 1943.
During this assignment Colonel Kight certainly had detailed knowledge of the parachute rescue accomplished by Flight Surgeon Lt. Col. Donald (Don) Davis Flickinger, and enlisted medics Sgt Richard S. Passey, and Cpl William Mackenzie on 2 August 1943. Further, it is likely he was involved in approving the 25 October 1943 activation of the first air rescue unit (Blackie’s Gang) providing search and rescue services on a 24-hour basis in a military contested environment. Convention on International Civil Aviation done at Chicago on the 7th day of December 1944.
(from Wikipedia…)