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combat search and rescue mission. concurrently, the MASF at
Riyadh relocated to King Abdul Aziz Naval Station to support Navy
Fleet Hospital 5 at Jubail. With the arrival of three additional
MASFs in mid October, one assumed responsibilities for Riyadh.
The remaining two were held in reserve for deployment as the
situation dictated.

(2) Contingency Positioning of MASFs. Prior to G-Day,
seven MASFs were deployed forward to airheads proximal to Army
evacuation hospitals or Marine surgical support companies near the
Iraq and Kuwait borders. Two of these were employed to support
the Army's XVIII Corps, two to support the Army's VII Corps and
three to support Marine Corps operations. As the XVIII Corps went
into Iraq, one of the MASFs was designated to follow, along with a
number of Army combat support hospitals and mobile Army surgical
hospitals, to support AE from Logistics Base Romeo and other sites
as indicated. The same was true for one of the MASFs attached to
VII Corps. One of the MASFs attached to the Marine Corps was
designated to follow the Marines into Kuwait City. None of the
requirements to send MASFs "across the line" materialized due to
the rapidity of the ground campaign and the lack of US casualties.
A MASF was also held in reserve at King Khalid Military City for
forward deployment as required. Finally, MASFs were deployed at
each of the strategic hubs. At the Muharraq IAP hub, a personnel
only MASF was deployed because facilities and supplies were
already available at the site. The remaining MASF personnel
packages were used to augment the busiest MASFs and were split
among the various locations. Three C-130-qualified crews were
attached to each MASF to support retrograde AE missions. By G
Day, MASFs were in place at their forward locations and at each
strategic hub. Those at the hubs were functioning under the
operational control of the Director, Aeromedical Operations. A
summary of MASFs, by location during the ground campaign, is at
Table 4.

e. Aeromedical Evacuation Crewmembers (AECMs).

	(1) Tactical (C-130) AECMs. Tactical AECMs (99 percent
ARC assets) were employed within the AOR throughout Operation
DESERT SHIELD/STORM. Logical options for the placement of these
AECMs to best support the mission included the beddown locations
for the C-130 aircraft and the forward MASFs. The first option
would allow AE crews to launch with the aircraft, negating the
need to fly somewhere else to pick up a crew before getting the
patients. The latter facilitated use of retrograde aircraft to
support AK, as crews would not have to be on the aircraft when it
launched; they could get on at the pick-up point and configure the
aircraft before the patients were loaded. However, neither of
those options could be exercised until the supporting elements
were in-place, and that did not occur until January in the case of
several of the forward MASFs. The initial tasking for 24 crews
allowed 12 to be placed at each of the first two AE hubs, Riyadh
and Dhahran. The capability existed to place AECM`s at the beddown
locations in early September. Three tactical crews were staged at

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