There is sometimes a connection between first aid and the military, and this is very much the case when it comes to the helicopter stretcher.
Whilst rudimentary stretchers are known to have existed since the 14th century, with other forms of lifting and carrying devices likely as old as the Knights Hospitaller, the same is the case with the air ambulance service and the dedicated stretchers they use to lift and carry people safely from dangerous locations to the nearest hospital quickly.
A long-standing myth is that the first air ambulance service of any kind took place during the Siege of Paris in 1870, where according to the same myths, as many as 160 wounded soldiers escaped the besieged capital through the use of hot air balloons.
Reviews of the crew and passenger records disprove this, but the concept was known even at that early stage.
The first air ambulance flight took place in 1917 by the British Army in the Sinai Desert in what was then the Ottoman Empire. A soldier in the Camel Corps had been shot in the ankle and was at risk of serious injury and infection when an Airco DH-4 biplane.
This was the first air ambulance even if it predated the helicopter, and it turned what would have been an almost certainly fatal three-day journey into a 45-minute flight, saving the soldier’s life.
A later conversion of the Airco DH-9A featured a stretcher loaded behind the pilot, which technically became the earliest progenitor to the modern air evacuation stretcher used today.
However it would take until April 1944, close to the end of the Second World War for a Sikorsky R-4 helicopter to become the first ever helicopter air ambulance, and by extension the first to use a stretcher.
It would take until 1970 and Christoph 1 for permanent air ambulance helicopters to become used outside of military service.