Abstract: The subject of the research of the article is the development during the Great Patriotic War of the medical and sanitary service of the main directorate of the Civil Air Fleet, as well as the versatile activities carried out by it to preserve the health of passengers and civil aviation workers. The article is based on statistical reports of the Medical and sanitary Administration of the Civil Air Fleet, stored in the Russian State Archive of Economics (RGAE). The study allows us to form a comprehensive picture of the dynamics of various types of medical institutions of the medical and sanitary service of civil aviation, the state of their staffing, the contribution of departmental public health of civil aviation to the preservation of life and health of citizens of the Soviet Union in difficult wartime.
The main conclusion of the study is that during the war there was a serious development of the medical system of the Civil Air Fleet before the war, which was essentially in its infancy. The design of its structure was accompanied by the struggle of various ideas, sometimes the medical network began to copy the development of the civil health network, creating an extensive network of hospitals, sometimes it went to risky experiments, such as the transformation of all outpatient clinics into polyclinics. Nevertheless, by the end of the war, the concept of providing basic medical care in urgent cases was established through medical inpatient facilities, health centers and medical units of airports, and the concentration of assistance, primarily to the personnel of the GVF, in a system of sufficiently powerful outpatient clinics.