The following is the 6th post by NavyLive guest blogger, LTJG Jeff Ryan, who is now deployed with the 2515th Navy Air Ambulance Detachment.
An MH-60S from the 2515th Naval Air Ambulance Detachment in flight near Basra, Iraq
As MEDEVAC pilots, we never know what the mission is until the call comes in. We can prepare for what we expect to see—the location, conditions, and patient injuries—but in the end it’s just a guess. Around here, we’re geared towards an overland mission—evacuations from bases or LZs throughout Kuwait and southern Iraq. We train towards these scenarios and configure our aircraft for desert operations.
At the same time, we know that as a Navy unit we have to be prepared for overwater missions with little notice. While it’s not our primary focus here in Kuwait, the ability to evacuate patients at sea anytime night or day makes us a valuable asset in the region. During my second night standing the alert I learned this firsthand when “MEDEVAC, MEDEVAC, MEDEVAC” was announced over the intercom system and my crew got the call to evacuate a patient from a ship off the coast of Iraq.
Under normal circumstances, flying to a ship is heavy on preparation and planning, so when we were given just minutes to be airborne we had to adapt accordingly. In anticipation of a night mission, our night vision goggles had been mounted on our helmets prior to sunset, and our equipment had been laid out in our lockers to grab quickly before running to the aircraft. We had to make one extra stop as our overland survival gear was swapped out for vests with flotation equipment and oxygen tanks for overwater operations. As we jumped into the helicopter and started the engines, we were passed the vessel’s frequencies and location which were then loaded into the aircraft’s computer. The aircrew pulled chocks and tower cleared our helo—now carrying the callsign “Dustoff 11 Evac”– to depart just eleven minutes after we first got the call.
We took off and headed directly east from our base towards the Gulf. Not long after departure we got a “sweet lock,” or good pick-up of the ship’s navigational aid. Now it was just a matter of flying as fast as we could to get to the patient. After getting airborne with such short notice, the transit time gave us a chance to regroup and double check that everything was set for the mission. The medics and aircrew in the back had a chance to set up their equipment while making calls to gather more patient information. In the cockpit, I was creating a flight plan to get us to the ship and back to the hospital while the other pilot flew and handled the radio calls. We calculated how much fuel the mission would require, and gave the guys in back a maximum allowed time on deck until we had to depart.
As we went “feet wet,” the waters of the Gulf became littered with the lights of oilrigs and massive cargo ships. With the help of our navigation computer, we were able to pick out our ship from the rest and began an approach as we saw the green outline of the vessel through our NVGs. We landed on deck and the aircrew and medic ran out, picked up the patient, and got them into the aircraft. Just a few minutes after we arrived we were taking off and “bustering,” or flying at maximum airspeed, to the hospital south of Kuwait City where the patient was safely offloaded.
As soon as the crew was back in the aircraft, we took off from the hospital pad and turned towards home. The flight back gave us all a chance to relax after the high tempo of the MEDEVAC. Just after eleven at night—about three hours after we had launched—we were landing back at our squadron and calling it a night after a successful, yet unexpected, first mission.
