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Pictures of WWII Flight Nurses


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Feel free to add any pictures of WWII Flight Nurses.

 

The following pictures were found on the Air Force website:

 

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=15457

 

 

Flight nurse training.jpg

 

At the AAF School of Air Evacuation at Bowman Field, Ky., student flight nurses learned how to handle patients with the aid of a mock-up fuselage of a Douglas C-47 transport. (U.S. Air Force photo)

 

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Flight nurse Gardiner.jpg

 

In July 1943, 2nd Lt. Ruth M. Gardiner died in an aircraft crash en route to evacuating patients in Alaska. She was the first USAAF flight nurse killed in a combat theater. (U.S. Air Force photo)

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Flight nurse Sicily.jpg

 

An evacuation plane could be loaded and airborne within 10 minutes, usually with one flight nurse and one medical technician. A flight surgeon briefed the nurse on each patient's condition prior to takeoff, and during the flight she was responsible for the safety and comfort of the patients. Here, Lt. Katye Swope checks patients being evacuated from Sicily to Africa for further medical treatment in July 1943. (U.S. Air Force photo)

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Flight nurse Guadalcanal.jpg

 

Flight nurse Lt. Mae Olson takes the name of a wounded American soldier being placed aboard a C-47 for air evacuation from Guadalcanal in 1943. (U.S. Air Force photo)

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Flight nurse Gear.jpg

 

Snapshot of three flight nurses in their flying gear in Great Britain. (Photo courtesy AFRL Research Division)

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Flight nurse C54.jpg

 

A medical technician and a flight nurse (lower right corner) tend to patients on a C-54 aircraft. The C-54 allowed larger numbers of patients to be air evacuated great distances. (Photo courtesy AFRL Research Division)

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Flight nurse 803rd.jpg

 

A C-47 air evacuation team from the 803rd Air Evacuation Transportation Squadron, Lt. Pauline Curry and Tech. Sgt. Lewis Marker, check a patient on a flight over India. (U.S. Air Force photo)

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It is always interesting to see images of these women providing such valuable service in War.I know they never get enough credit. Thanks for posting.

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Great picture of the nurse on Iwo.

 

Here is another one I have that is of flight nurses at training camp at Bowman Field.

 

Flight Nurse at training camp BOWMAN FIELD.jpg

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Here is one of a flight nurse in New Guinea. Note that she is wearing a side arm. Flight nurses in the Pacific wore guns in case they were shot down.

 

Flight nurse Hollandia New Guinea.jpg

 

 

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Flight nurse C54 2.jpg

 

1st Lt Margaret Murphy, Flight Nurse and another crew member adjust traveling litters aboard a C-54 Skymaster, returning patients to the United States’ Zone of Interior. A trip usually took 24-hours, including a single stop-over to change crews, refuel, and feed the patients …

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Excellent images! It's curious that Flight Nurse Lt. Ruth Gardiner (frame #2) is wearing a two-inch Flight Surgeon wing...

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It's curious that Flight Nurse Lt. Ruth Gardiner (frame #2) is wearing a two-inch Flight Surgeon wing...

 

Rusty,

Good eye! I wonder if it is because the picture was taken in early 1943. I have been trying to find out when the Flight Nurse wings were first established. I believe it would have been later in 1943. Do you know?

 

I found this interesting information in the book "Beyond the Call of Duty - Army Flight Nursing in WWII"

 

"General Grant - on the spur of the moment - realizing that no one had thought of an insignia for the flight nurses, unpinned his own miniature flight surgeon's insignia, and pinned it on the honor graduate remarking that from that moment on, the insignia of the flight nurses would be similar to that of the flight surgeon's with the addition of a small 'N' superimposed".

 

Maybe this is why she has the two inch wing. The honor graduate was Geraldine Dishroon not Gardiner but maybe this explains the 2 inch wing. What do you think?

 

....Kat

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The first Navy flight nurse on Iwo Jima (6 March 1945) and later Okinawa (6 April 1945), ENS Jane Kendeigh, NC, USNR, became a symbol for casualty evacuation and high altitude nursing. (BUMED Archives)

 

Flight nurse Navy.jpg

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Lt. J.G. Mae Hanson, NC, USNR, serves fruit juice to the casualties from Okinawa, while Pharmacist Mate, 2nd Class Kenneth Plain checks on a patient. May 1945. (BUMED Archives)

 

Flight nurse Hanson.jpg

 

 

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All of the following pictures down to the Flight Nurse Creed can be found on the USAAF Museum website:

 

http://www.airforcemedicine.af.mil/news/story_print.asp?id=123403420

 

 

As the flight nurse on the first intercontinental air evacuation flight, 2nd Lt. Elsie S. Ott demonstrated the potential of air evacuation in January 1943. An Army nurse who had never flown in an airplane and had no air evacuation training, she successfully oversaw the movement of five seriously ill patients from India to Washington, D.C. This six-day trip would have normally taken three months by ship and ground transportation. For her actions on this historic flight, Ott received the first Air Medal presented to a woman, and she also received formal flight nurse training.

 

Brig. Gen. Fred W. Borum presents the Air Medal to Lt. Elsie Ott, who was the first woman to receive the Air Medal. (U.S. Air Force photo)

 

Flight nurse air medal.jpg

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Two of the first flight nurses to make evacuation flights into Normandy after D-Day, Lts. Suella Bernard (left) and Marijean Brown (center) are greeted by Lt. Foster, their head nurse. They are holding poppies they brought back from the Normandy beachhead. (U.S. Air Force photo)

 

Flight nurse DDay.jpg

 

 

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