Sikorsky UH-19D 55-3227 United States Army

These are 1/72 scale decals for the Sikorsky UH-19D Chickasaw, serial 55-3227, assigned to the 126th Medical Company, California Army National Guard — a dedicated medevac helicopter serving in one of the Guard's frontline medical evacuation units during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The UH-19D Chickasaw was the U.S. Army's utility transport variant of the Sikorsky S-55, powered by a nose-mounted Wright R-1300 radial engine that freed the fuselage for an unobstructed cabin capable of carrying litter patients or ambulatory casualties. In Army medical company service, the UH-19 represented the direct application of the hard-won medevac lessons of the Korean War — where helicopter casualty evacuation had dramatically reduced battlefield mortality rates — to the peacetime Army's standing medical support structure. The ability to rapidly extract wounded soldiers from the battlefield and deliver them to surgical care within the critical "golden hour" was transforming military medicine, and UH-19s assigned to medical companies like the 126th were the workhorses of that revolution.

The 126th Medical Company of the California Army National Guard provided aeromedical evacuation capability to the units it supported, with Guard medical aviation units playing an essential role in maintaining the Army's medevac readiness during the peacetime years between Korea and Vietnam. Operating the UH-19D in the dedicated medevac role, the 126th's crews developed the skills, procedures, and institutional knowledge that would be put to the ultimate test when Army aviation helicopter medevac units deployed to Vietnam — where the UH-1 Huey "Dustoff" crews would carry on and expand the life-saving tradition pioneered by units like the 126th and their Chickasaws.

A meaningful medevac subject representing the evolution of Army National Guard aeromedical evacuation between Korea and Vietnam. Please allow some time for decal printing and shipping.