Like VMO-6, the 3rd ARS was a mix of fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft. But in Korea’s rugged terrain, the helicopters quickly assumed a greater role in both the assigned mission of aircrew rescue and impromptu casualty evacuation. Within days of the Air Force choppers’ arrival in Korea, the Eighth Army’s surgeon general requested their help in evacuating critically wounded soldiers from the front. Thereafter, when the helicopters were not flying search-and-rescue missions, the detachment pitched in to get the wounded to hospitals. In the next month alone, the Air Rescue choppers evacuated 83 critically wounded soldiers, half of whom, the Eighth Army surgeon general said, would have died without the airlift.

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On August 30, the 3rd ARS formally organized Detachment F, with six H-5s at K-1 airfield, near Pusan. Five days later, 1st Lt. Paul W. Van Boven flew out of the Pusan perimeter to retrieve Captain Robert E. Wayne, the first of many such saves.

As UN forces advanced out of Pusan following the Inchon landing, Detachment F moved north to Seoul K-16, but had to fall back to K-37 south of Taegu when the Chinese attacks forced the allies to retreat. In February Detachment F helicopters made multiple flights to deliver blankets, blood plasma and medical supplies and to fly out casualties when part of the 2nd Division was surrounded at Chipyong-ni. At times defying 40-knot winds and blinding snow, the chopper crews saved 52 soldiers within two days.

In response to calls for more capable aircraft, an Air Proving Ground team brought two Sikorsky H-19s to Korea in March 1951. The day after they arrived, one was used to help the smaller H-5s evacuate paratroopers from the Mussan-ni drop zone.

While UN forces stalled the Chinese offensive in late spring of 1951, the detachment’s missions changed. With the fighting settling into trench warfare, the Eighth Army was suffering fewer casualties and Army helicopters were taking over a larger share of the medevac duties. But enemy flak was downing more allied aircraft over hostile territory, so the Air Force helicopters soon went back to rescue missions.

In June the Air Force renamed the unit Detachment 1, 3rd ARS, and opened a search-and-rescue coordination facility at the Fifth Air Force’s tactical air control center in Seoul. In February 1952, Detachment 1 began replacing its H-5s with H-19s. The larger helicopters had a flight radius of 120 miles, compared to 85 miles for the H-5s, and could carry nine litters instead of only one. As part of worldwide reorganizations in 1952-53, the 3rd Air Rescue Squadron became a group and Detachment 1 became the 2157th Air Rescue Squadron.

Despite its early work with helicopters, the Army was the last of the U.S. services to bring rotary wing units into Korea. The first Army unit, the 2nd Helicopter Detachment, arrived there on November 22, 1950, with four Bell H-13Bs (the same aircraft as the Marine HTLs). After additional training, the unit became operational on January 1, 1951. It was joined later that month by the 3rd and 4th Helicopter detachments, with four of the Bells. Using procedures developed by the Air Force, the H-13s began to assume much of the medevac burden.

In May the detachments were redesignated as the 8191st, 8192nd and 8193rd Army units. Similar to the learning process the Marines and the Air Force had gone through, a postwar report said, the Army pilots and the ground troops they served had to learn by trial and error what their choppers could or could not do during medevac missions. For example, ground units calling for medevacs had to be taught the importance of providing accurate coordinates for pickup and how to mark landing spots with panels or colored smoke. Ground commanders were told to request helicopter evacuation only for troops with head, chest or abdominal wounds, multiple fractures and great loss of blood, or if no ambulance were available or ground transport would likely exacerbate patients’ serious injuries.

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