Page 6 - Volume 15 Number 11

Johnson says the confidence that comes with the King Air’s twin engines, ability to get in and out of smaller airports and easy- to-access parts and service won out over the Pilatus and TBM models he also considered.
He formed Tactical Medical Solutions in 2003 and left the military in 2006. The business has grown from a one-man operation with orders fulfilled through all-night sewing sessions to an international business with more than 100 employees, sites in four states and distribution in 70 countries of a line of products used at the point of injury.
Johnson turned to business aviation in 2008 to shorten the drive to a hard-to-reach first factory and in 2018 took delivery of his dream airplane – a 2006 Beechcraft King Air C90GT that he uses to continue growing his businesses and investments, for recreational trips and for philanthropic missions.
“The King Air isn’t the fastest, it doesn’t fly the highest but it’s a workhorse and being able to get in and out of pretty much anywhere, I think it gives you more choices than just about anything else out there,” Johnson said.
Green Beret by day, seamster by night
Johnson said he was always interested in aviation though he had no pilot influences growing up. He con- sidered becoming an Army aviator when he enlisted at age 17, but instead went the special forces route.
He advanced from airborne infantryman to a scout platoon and then sniper school. His “job interview” to join the U.S. Army Special Forces involved three weeks of 24-hour-a-day training. He was selected to be a medical specialist and received two years of training to administer emergency medical care in combat and
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humanitarian situations. He completed three tours in Afghanistan as a Green Beret and then volunteered for 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment – Delta, otherwise known as the secretive, elite Delta Force.
It was during his first tour where he saw the need for innovation in the field.
“We had a pretty decent amount of casualties, not a lot of U.S. but mostly civilians or Afghan, and I realized pretty quickly that the items we were issued hadn’t been improved since Vietnam,” Johnson said. “The tourniquet was the same type they issued on D-Day. Bleeding to death was the No. 1 cause of death on the battlefield and we were wasting a lot of time improvising to save a life. I knew there had to be a better way.
“I was in a fire base on the Pakistani border and one night I was up late on radio watch. I drew up the design for a tourniquet, and when I came home, I started mak- ing it in my garage, figuring out how to get it to actually function correctly.”
The standard issue tourniquet, he said, was basically
a belt. Most Army medics weren’t using it because it took too much improvising to get it to work. He created
a durable, reliable and easy-to-use tourniquet that is effective at controlling severe bleeding. It allows you to put it on yourself with one hand, if necessary, and is easier for first responders to tighten, increase pressure and use on different sized limbs. He first gave them to buddies who were deploying, then started getting re- quests from many others via word-of-mouth. Developing ›
NOVEMBER 2021