When composing an essay about USAF Survival School, I searched for and found this amazing video: SERE Class 1801 team video, linked below. While I’m almost certain these team members are instructors not your average aircrew newbies like I was in September 1985 when I arrived at Fairchild AFB for the “basic” suvival school offered there for new aircrew members of all ilks. The team depicted in the video goes through a lot of the same terrain and training I myself experienced 34 years ago, but trust me… we never managed to capture and roast any kind of animal during my week in the wilderness. Just a few bugs, worms, mussels and a big ugly snake the instructor forced us all to eat to dispel “food aversions.”
This video is really worth looking at if only for some spectacular scenery with great music to accompany the action and inaction. For some of us with AF Aircrew background, there are some nostalgic views of mountains we were once forced to climb while really hungry. I will share my own survival school experiences in comments, if the video posts.
As well as one that more accurately depicts my own “limited” survival training.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a17OaaxqIY
Okay, Donkey. I will tell my own tale here now.
Except I just tried to log on and my new computer got banned.
I will email and get it cleared.
M G,
I love to see you posting. Keep it up, I’m all ears.
So, I am limited to my damn phone.
I logged in with my new computer (even virus protection installed six months free!) and got banned.
I will put the link here.
SERE at Eglin was nothing like that. We were 2 man teams that were dropped into a swamp with our battle rattle minus ammo pouches and small arms. All we had was a full canteen, purification tabs, 1 MRE, knife, first-aid kit, compass, rain poncho, and 3 pen-flares.
The survival portion was easy. I grew up just outside the Okefenokee swamp and I had been paired with a coon-ass from Louisiana named Hébert. We knew how to live off the land. The evasion and resistance was a joke, they knew where we were and when they got ready they captured us. Escape was also a joke. Those that escaped were let go.
Mine was not like that either except for the hikes up mountains at Fairchild. The rest was silly games.
I will say that the POW Camp Training was not necessarily realistic, but it was also a glimpse at what a certain type of hell on earth might look like. I would not like to repeat that experience in any form.
Okay, this is the water survival training facility at Fairchild. Seriously, my “crew” had to egress that little vessel (supposedly our plane had crashed and we had to get out of the wreckage and into a raft. Then, the survival team instructors sprayed us with fire hoses until we accomplished the “objectives” of the water survival lesson.
It was a sad excuse for training, but I knew good and well I wasn’t swimming away from an E-3 going into the water anywhere. And… no parachutes.
So, if you want to make fun of me for enduring water survival school in a really nice swimming pool, go right ahead.
The land survival course was the most interesting and useful part. Hiking for miles and miles every day, up and down mountains you can have to see to believe was an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything. True, I only had to survive 6 nights and 7 days in the “field” without additional rations (we took some dried foods with us and most of us were in fasting mode by the third or fourth day.) But, it was a great experience and I did learn a lot. Now that this computer appears to be back up and online, I will see if I can goad some of the other more experienced survival school graduates into sharing some advice and tips.
In January 1964 I was assigned to the 3637th Survival Training Sq. Stead AFB, Reno Nev. Part of Air Training Command. My job was commander of one of the field flights which did the teaching and the hiking. Two weeks on base in training, one week in the “hills” of the Plumas National Forest about 40 miles north of Lake Tahoe. If you were in the mountains before late March you lived that week on top of about 4-6 feet of snow and ice.
I was at Stead until it was closed by the pentagon in the Spring of 1966. Then I went to Saigon, so I never saw the facility that had been built up at Fairchild.
Can’t give any advice in today’s world, but back then the focus was on ‘pay attention’ and ‘learn map and compass orienteering..’
Yes, I have lots of stories, but they are my memories…
I went through that shit in 1971. Most miserable two weeks I ever spent. The POW camp was living hell and the trek was a week of snow, sleet, rain and freezing rain. We were told that the graduation certificate was the most important document in our possession. I also remember that the Air Force was contemplating a refresher every five years. To a man, the pilots I worked with said “Fuck you, you can have my wings before I do that again”. The proposal was quietly dropped.
I believe you.
But by 1985 all classes were condensed for specialized training. I managed a mid-September field date. Easy-peasy for sure compared to Winter.
POW camp was frightening for sure. Too many moments that seemed all too real.
Yup, Vietnam was in full swing and it was some serious shit. My wife and I love Asian food and occasionally the restaurant background music is very similar to what they played in the POW camp. Brings flashbacks of the camp to mind. It had to be tough and realistic to try and prepare us for the Hanoi Hilton. I had only seen snow one time before Fairchild, welcome to the NFL! Always enjoy your posts.
I went thru Navy SS, 1964, Warner Springs, CA
POW training was nasty.
Convinced me I would not be taken alive, if possible.
Me too. I could not fathom how mean they were to us!
When I was in the Junior Marines
We did all that shit and more with 90 pounds of gear on our backs. Up and down mountains and through the swamps of Louisiana for 3 solid months.Never hear anyone complain because were tough .The best and we knew it.
I did not complain either but I was dragging with that backpack.
What I take away from the video(s) is the lack of realistic threat or sense of danger. I felt it was all a joke except the sadistic bastards at POW camp training.
M G,
When I played the game in 1967, Fairchild was three weeks. First week was “classroom” with a little hand-to-hand training such as trying to disarm the other guy. We were each given a parachute from which to make some gear such as a pack to carry what little you had to take with you the next week which was the hike through the woods. Essentially, we were given what was normally the survival gear in the seat pack of an ejection seat.
We did work very hard at evasion. I, a lieutenant, was teamed with a Lt/Col who did get captured when he took the path too well traveled. Primary lessons: 1) Take the hard path as it is more difficult for the bad guys to get you. 2) You can go a long way without food, but you do need some sleep and lots of water. 3) Snake and rodent does taste good after day three. 4) Take some mosquito repellent.
Third week was as a captive and the bad guys put us in many interesting situations from various types of interrogation to the black box, in which you barely fit, and you were provided with smoke, other interesting odors, and various types of noise. (Civilian take: Never talk to a cop.)
What, I think, they tried to teach you was to forget your ego, you are no longer in control of your surroundings, concentrate on being flexible and learn to survive regardless of the situation.
In 1967, Fairchild was a first class school.
I thought it was a decent intro to survival in 1985 but it was still patterned toward Vietnam era threat.
I imagine desert terrain has more focus now.
There was a big ugly woman called Olga who scared me half to death. I had nightmares about her
My team of six survival students consisted of a B2 pilot named Steve, a navigator for B52s, two flight engineers from 141s and a loadmaster. The sixth was me (radar tech AWACS).
Our instructor was a buck sgt who joined us each morning and left to sleep with other instructors at night.
When I went to survival training I was 23 years old, so the hiking and climbing were not overly strenuous.
Doing it hungry was a lesson. So was drinking water from ponds and streams treated with iodine. (I have lots of iodine tablets in store but expect to never need them. Hope to never.)
I was the only female on the team. I had the rabbit. Each team had a pet rabbit to kill the last camping night. The instructor assigned me to feed and care for Scarlett for the week. And then I thumped her and we ate her the night before we went full E&E.
I got assigned to the B2 pilot as an escape partner and since he was a Captain I let him navigate. He had a great idea (which worked) of following the stream a mile or so to the boundary and following the boundary to avoid the “enemy”. So except for a couple of chases at the start, we pretty much walked in.
Those backpacks were too much for my shoulders. The instructor helped me refashion the carrying frame to redistribute the weight from my shoulders to my hips. It made a big difference. Women do not have the upper back strength to carry a 50+ lb pack like that. A gal in another group hurt her shoulders and got medivacked out.
Women on flight crew were still a fairly new thing then. When we were in full escape and evade mode (no lights) I discovered what pitch black in the forest means when I had to go pee in the night. If I hadn’t counted my steps I would have been lost. I will never forget that sense of not knowing where I was standing last than 5 steps from my tent.
POW camp was classified but I can tell you that standing in a box with horrible wailing music “Napalm sticks to kids” for 24 to 36 hours and being interrogated by sadistic jerks off and on was enough to convince me avoiding capture would be the better option.
The worst of the whole experience, for me, was having to use the coffee can in the corner. And…there was no toilet paper.
So…it was a brief taste of Hell. I would rather avoid the real thing.
The loadmaster was TSgt Myagi. I remember because he insisted on learning how to tie every knot the instructor taught.