C-17 Performs as Operating Room:

The capabilities of the Air Force’s Critical Care Air Transportation Teams are becoming legend. Take, for example, the 332nd Expeditionary Air Evacuation Squadron’s CCATT, which just last month turned their C-17 transport into an operating room. The commander of the 332nd EAEF at Balad AB, Iraq, Lt. Col. Gregory Wood wrote up the feat in last week’s Red Tail Flyer, describing the work of the CCATT as they flew from Iraq to Germany with a patient who had burns over 50 percent of his body. At a routine stop in Kuwait, the patient’s vital signs began dropping, but rather than backtrack to Balad, the 332nd team joined with another CCATT to form a surgical team, and set up an operation room on the C-17, where they managed to tie off blood vessels, stopping the patient’s profuse bleeding. They saved the patient’s life and got him to the hospital in Germany.