The Flying Nightingales

The Flying Nightingales

Air evacuation of casualties from the Normandy beachhead by the RAF began on 13 June 1944, only seven days after D-Day. Thousands of seriously-wounded men were flown back to the UK in Dakota transport aircraft from newly-built airstrips in France so that their injuries could receive life-saving treatment as quickly as possible. To care for the casualties in the air, the Dakotas carried nursing orderlies, many of them women serving in the WAAF. These 'Flying Nightingales' were all volunteers and although they shared the same dangers and hardships as other RAF air crew, they were not given a distinguishing air crew badge until 1999, when 22 surviving former WAAF air ambulance nursing orderlies were invited to Buckingham Palace to receive their 'wings'.