The Italian Air Force expresses its condolences to the families of the five victims.
The aircraft, assigned to the 46th Air Brigade of Pisa, crashed shortly after takeoff during a training mission near the Tuscan military base.
The Italian Air Force, as required by current procedures, will appoint a commission to investigate the causes of the accident. Characteristics: – DIMENSIONS: Wingspan: 40.41 m
Height: 11.84 m
Length: 29.79 – PERFORMANCE: Maximum speed: over 640 km/h
Tangential road: over 9,300 m
Range: over 5,200 km – CREW: 2 pilots
1 loadmaster – LOAD CAPACITY: 92 soldiers or 76 parachutists
70 stretchers 6 assistants or 74 stretchers 2 healthcare assistants (short)
97 stretchers and 4 assistants or 93 stretchers and 8 medical assistants (long version) – PROPULSION SYSTEM: 4 Rolls-Royce (Allison) AE2100D3 turboprops of 4,700 HP VERY SHORT SUMMARY OF THE MAJOR HUMANITARIAN MISSIONS CARRIED OUT WORLDWIDE BY THE 46TH AIR BRIGADE
Since its first international mission in 1962, the transport capability of the aircraft of the 46th Air Brigade has meant that the Unit has become one of the main instruments through which successive Italian Governments have offered aid to populations in difficulty around the world, for various reasons.
Since that date, the 46th Air Brigade has flown over 90,000 hours exclusively transporting aid of all kinds, from food, medicines, and medical equipment to field hospitals and everything that can be useful in extreme conditions of hardship and crisis.
Framing all this, several intense cooperative activities have developed with many humanitarian organisations, non-profit organisations and units of excellence in the field of medical rescue and recovery.
Among these we include Professor Evangelisti's Emergency Surgery Unit, the Civil Protection units and the fire service.
These activities have developed not only worldwide, but also in Italy on all occasions that have required prompt interventions in terms of personnel and equipment.
Thanks to the large payload capacities of the transport aircraft (C130J and C27J), the Brigade also performs the invaluable service of transporting organs for transplants and people in imminent danger to life, who many times have to be loaded on board the aircraft with their entire ambulance as they cannot be disconnected from medical equipment. For this service, the 46th Air Brigade has two alert crews every day (12 hours each) ready to depart in 120 or 180 minutes depending on the requirement. In this service, the 46th collaborates with the 31st Wing of Ciampino and the 15th Wing of Pratica di Mare, which also carry out various types of medical flights.
From 2006, after intensive study and experimentation, the Brigade's crews and aircraft achieved the capability for transporting individuals with highly contagious diseases. This activity is carried out in collaboration with the two main hospitals specialising in infectious diseases, based in Rome and Milan. In Europe, the Italian Air Force and the British Royal Air Force are the only two air forces capable of performing this type of transport.
In December 2008, an important exercise was held in Pisa in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, the Maritime and Air Border Health Office of Livorno and the Military Corps of the Italian Red Cross, simulating the transport of highly infected persons to a primary biocontainment facility specially set up at Pisa military airport.
For these primary reasons, in June 2007, during an international ceremony held in Paris, the 46th Air Brigade was awarded the “Flight Award”, a prestigious worldwide recognition in the aeronautical field.
The 46th Air Brigade of Pisa, present in the area for 60 years, is an entity strongly linked to the Tuscan city and in close and continuous connection with all organisations, well-known and lesser-known, with which a concrete collaboration has been established over time in favour of those in greatest need.
Below is a very brief summary of the major humanitarian missions, bearing in mind that the 46th Air Brigade, like all other flight units of the Italian Air Force, participates in the defence of national airspace with the specific role of also providing support tasks for the other Armed Forces and State Corps. Former Belgian Congo 1960 – 1962 (21 killed on humanitarian transport missions – Kindu Massacre)
Turkey Earthquakes 1966 1970 1975 1992 1999
Relief effort for the Algerian flood victims 1973
Relief operation for the population of Santo Domingo 1979
Firefighting activities started from 1980 to 2000 (8 fatalities – 1 crew in Sardinia and 1 crew in Greve in Chianti)
Operations in Lebanon 1980 – 1982
Earthquakes in Iran 1981 – 2004
Airlift for the severe famine in Ethiopia 1984
1987 Ecuador earthquake
Relief aid for the population of Mali 1986 – 2004
Earthquakes in Russia – Yerevan 1988 – 1990
Mission in support of the C.N.R. in Antarctica from 1990 to 2000
Relief for the population of Kurdistan 1990-1991
Relief operations in Somalia and Ethiopia 1992 – 1993
Humanitarian aid in Lebanon 1994
Humanitarian aid in Rwanda 1995
Aid to the former Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1997 (1 crew shot down over the skies of Sarajevo on 2 September 1992, 4 dead, during the transport of medicine to the besieged population of the Bosnian capital)
Aid for the population of East Timor from 1999 through to the end of 2000
2004 Morocco earthquake
Relief efforts for the population of Beslan (Ossetia) following the school siege by Chechen terrorists 2004
Hurricane Katrina USA 2005
2004–2005 South-East Asian Tsunami
2005 Georgia floods
2005 Kashmir earthquake
“Bringing Light Back” Mission in Mali: from 2005 to 2008 over 2,500 cataract operations, 11,500 consultations
Mission to Darfur in support of the UN African contingent.
First democratic elections in the DR Congo, July–December 2006 (EUFOR RD CONGO)
Aid for the Sahrawi people in the Algerian desert 2006 – 2007 – 2008
Humanitarian aid in Sudan 2008 The Italian Flag, symbol of the 46th, has been awarded the following decorations: 1943: Gold Medal of Military Valour 1945: War Cross for Military Valour 1992: Gold Medal of Aeronautical Valour 1996: Silver Cross of Army Merit 2003: Knight's Decoration of the Military Order of Italy 2008: Gold Medal of Civil Merit
