It ain’t all that in the fleet, nor in naval aviation either, as CJ Chivers reports in the New York Times:
“If I could guarantee that you would never need this training, I would say, ‘O.K., sit in the back and use your iPhone and do whatever you want to do while the rest of us work,’ ” he said. “But these exercises are all based on real incidents, and sometimes on recurrent real incidents.”
He added: “No one plans for this kind of mishap. People don’t go to work one day expecting that they will have to eject. But it happens. And when it happens, they have to be ready.”
That statement aligned with the experience of Lt. Jonathan D. Farley, an F/A-18 pilot who volunteered in late 2007 to serve as a downed pilot for a rescue-training exercise on the West Coast. Lieutenant Farley was picked up from the ground by an MH-60 helicopter crew.
As the helicopter returned to an aircraft carrier with him in a back seat, the exercise turned real.
“I wasn’t paying attention,” he said. “I was along for the ride.” Then he saw multiple warning lights flash at once in the cockpit’s instrument panel. A crewman near him pointed toward the water and then assumed a brace position.
The helicopter was going down.
Without time to prepare, Lieutenant Farley was trapped in a sequence straight from the dunk-tank course.
Which you’d have known all about, had you been trolling the through the 2004 archives of this very site.
NYT: All the news that fits
NL: All the news that fits, first! With even more Roger.
Good training I agree, the utility of it I never had to experience. Getting kicked in the face by somebody getting out ahead of you was the worst part of the training. I learned to just hang on and wait them out- made egressing go much smoother. By the way, the NYT link goes to the NL archive vice the CJ Chivers report.
Not anymore, thanks!
A certain former CO of a certain DD, that you got to know as a Midn, really freaked out when we did this in preps for the staff to deploy and have the ability to hang out in the air with our ASW forces off the big decks….Regardless of the seat location, he clawed his way out over/past/under anyone in the way…full on panic mode…Me, having spend a lot of years in the water, and being able to make the 50m of a pool length underwater, I could hang back and observe and wait my turn, when directed to use a specific egress point.
We have another pilot who is a VFA RAG instructor on west coast who was involved in the same scenario (possibly the same incident). Hearing him recount of the crash sends chills up my spine.
The vast majority of all emergency training regardless of field is for “stuff you don’t expect to have to use” but that you need to know without hesitation when the moment comes.
But as the old saying goes; “When you least expect it… expect it!”
The vasty bulk of SCUBA training, for example, is on how to handle emergency situations calmly and correctly without having to figure it all out at the time.
Anybody can work the equipment and the tables when all is well. What’s important is knowing what to do when all isn’t.
I have HUET training coming in my near future. I’m just a middle age engineer without hope of flying a fighter jet. I am paid well, so I guess that will be my motivator.
Is your insurance agent well paid by your premiums being up to date, too?
I hated the helo dunker the first time I had to go through it. And the second time. And the third time. Sure glad I had it. But, note to record: Putting NFO’s into the right front seat of a helo ain’t gonna happen guys. But I know you all were VERY amused by my flailing.
I noted, with some considerable interest that NYT reporters were suggesting that they actually deployed and flew in F/A 18′s ??? I’ll summon up all my generosity and say that the press `have their uses`- there, thats as generous as I get with them – but what’s all this flying on missions about? And what was the point? (Genuine question, no cynicism should be inferred)
IIRC, a couple of Whale and Vigi dudes, on separate occasions, had to bail out/eject and then had the SAR helo fall outa the sky! Just wasn’t their day.
MikeyB
Sorry guys, this is so totally bogus training it is not even funny.
As a staff pax, DESRON pax, fleet sailor, you get the briefing, you get the cranial and the float vest but you never ever went through the dunker. Not your job.
Guys that routinely all the time fly in those damned things, their OPTAR includes money to buy every member of the deployable command a real helmet and a no kidding 5 minute oxygen flask that fits in their thigh pocket of their custom flight suit also provided by the command OPTAR.
Those folks would be the pilot the co, the crew chief, any EOD aboard, any SPECWAR aboard, the rest, not so much.
It’s getting the orientation after crashing into the water to the surface that can take time after the thing dumps 180 degrees and follows the engines to the bottom but no single command/staff I’ve been on/flown with thinks equipping the crew with an O2 flask matches the safety of giving them a cranial or float coat.
I’ve always thought that this was PRETTY FUCKED UP. You can experience the same feeling flying with SPECWAR or EOD on any model HELO and they all have the pocket O2 flask and you don’t. That doesn’t necessarily mean that all so equipped survive.
And it’s the pointy guys and helo crews that fly after dark. It takes a signature from the ship CO to fly pax after dark over water. In my experience many were too putrid to put their signature on the document and tried to just order after dark flights by bullying the junior helo pilots. Never saw that work out. Those men and women were, in all my experience, perfectly willing to say, “sign here.” Because yeah, it’s a death sentence to ditch a helo after dark with people without O2 or any experience in finding the surface without any orientation after ditching underwater from an upside down helo.
Au Contraire – as a former Desron Staff weenie, I could say that if your staff rotorhead was at all worth his weight in Sing-Ha bottle tops, he would have arranged such a fun day in the pool. As an official no shitter, 2 weeks after the whole staff went thru the dunker we watched a CH46 hit the drink during vertrep off of Kansas City – all went in the drink, and all came out again – scary Comptuex memories fer sure.
I guess they didn’t really like me. Helo flights during Red Sea MCM ops back in 1984 included flying sometimes with the RH-53s. A pre-flight brief was required but all we got was the cranial and the float coat. No Dunker training required.
My experience is kind of weird and unique probably. I recall back in 1996 the DESRON 50 LT along for the ride made it out of the upside HH-60 but the youngest SEAL onboard didn’t and as I recall both pilots didn’t survive.
We routinely embarked PAX on the later Desert Ducks and flew them over the Persian Gulf from Bahrain to other places and out to ships and oil platforms. I know for a fact that none of them were given the training in question.
I think it was a different era. No doubt you’re absolutely right these days.
Our Staff weenie was a P-3C TACCO…and he didn’t…, well, nice guy, but his greatest usefulness, was, seeing as how we Shoes all out ranked him, was to make him go steaming with the Commodore, while we got some real sleep. Payback for him getting all that per diem all those years. Actually, he was a good sport about it all, and we still never let him stand Staff Watch Officer underway….
Ship’s COs can NOT authorize pax over water at night. Pax over water at night can only be done in the case of operational necessity which can only be declared by area commanders or delegated to numbered fleet commanders.
For those of use who are exposed to the risk of water entry every time we fly oer water, this training is not bogus, but lifesaving. I know many folks who have safely egressed from helos due to this training.
And while the chances are slim that jet guys may have to use it, I’m sure the Hornet driver in the example is pretty happy he had it.
Pags,
It was a real case from memory. A young helo pilot arrived in the tent we shared at Cairo West in tears during Bright Star back in ’95. She’d been ordered to fly PAX back off the carrier and refused to because it was dark. She said she would do it if the CO signed but he wouldn’t and instead called her in for a total ass chewing. Perhaps my memory is hazy and she meant the Admiral wouldn’t sign and tried to browbeat her into doing something she proved totally unwilling to do. She and helo got back with no PAX. At the time we were all working directly for JTF A/ARCENT. This never made it to his level.
Other cases were more refined. Pilots said no after dark flight over water with passengers embarked and that was accepted as the rule. Made perfect sense to me.
Curtis,
I don’t doubt that it was a real case. COs trying to get pax over water at night is a common occurrence and many a helo driver has had to have a talk with a Ship’s CO.
During a PAXFER I had to kindly tell an O-6 that if he didn’t get on board my helo in the next five minutes he was going to be spending the night in Kuwait or on the boat.
I lost count of the helo rides I had while being in the TACDESRON. On cruise to the MED/IO, we transfered flag ships 9 times by helo. That didn’t count other trips around the BG ships for what ever. Later, as the CSA guy for LANT, I flew all over the place and was shuttled between ships in the AFWTF range, doing inspections coming and going, or, near the end of 90, during, then enroute Desert Shield ops, too, which required CODing out and back (almost too far east to make it back, thanks to one unnamed CGN, that couldn’t simulate an engagement by a single weapons systems with an F-14 pretending to be an Exocet…
I had legally purchased a real nomex flight jacket, and my LDO LT on the CSMTT/CSTG had a plain nylon knock off. When I busted his chops about the non-fireproofness, he’d say “Sir, they’ll be able to tell us apart in the wreckage because your torso won’t be burned to a crisp….” Touche, but Russ was that kind of fast thinker….probably why he also retired as an O-6, too.
xformed,
My last/final job with the navy was at a group staff where the entire N7 staff did everything required to cert as Level III boarding teams in order to be able to cert the training of our dets. It included Limp Duck stuff and boarding that way in San Diego. I don’t know if they had the dunker but then, on the other hand, they were slung below the helo on a rope. Probably wouldn’t have involved training in making it out of the helo.
I recently had to do the civilian version of this trainer in order to qualify to visit a client’s off-shore facility. About the same as I remembered it from the Navy. (My experience was different from Curtis, even as a staff pax for an exercise we had to do the training.) Most of the other members of the civilian class were freaked out. Like Tuna, I just waited until everyone else was out. I didn’t think it was that big a deal and the water wasn’t very cold. But then again, I swim a lot and often for recreation and exercise, so I never thought this trainer was that big a deal. The water in the DC wet trainer at the Sub Base was colder. Even colder still was doing the escape trainer at Sub School in February (the old tower, not the new heated pool). Even so, I would do them all again, so I guess everyone has a different definition of what is and isn’t fun.
Being a sub guy the closest thing I came to this was the DC wet trainer – where they actively tried to flood you to death!! But across the board the reaction to everyone after the training was the same – “Can we do it again”??!!
The escape tower was a no-go the entire time (1988-1992) I was at NLON. I never heard of it being used.
That more than anything else convinced you NOT to have an accident – the Navy had basically figured out that giving you the escape training was a waste of time.
I spent one Patrol seriously attempting to learn the escape procedure for the after escape trunk on my submarine. I figure that I had 80 days at sea with a watch rotation of 1 in 3 to work on it since I was qualified and kind of bored….but at the end of the Patrol I gave up the attempt. I could barely figure out how to do the proper sequence of valves with a flashlight and the procedure in front of me – there was no way that I was going to be able to sequence the proper valve manipulations in the dark and with water all around me…
Plus there was the small detail of ear drum piercing, which the SOP assured me was “relatively painless…”
Tearing an eardrum can be quite painful, or can sometimes be painless (I perfed one slightly, diving, didn’t know it until I realized how strange everything to my left sounded afterward)… but blowing out a sinus, that’s reputed to be painful enough to make you test that “It’s safe to puke through your regulator” theory.
Ah yes, panic in a drum. Good times at NACCS.
My group did our 4 passes so smoothly they held us over to run it for the Netherlands CNO who was touring the base. Yippee. Go team.
There we sat shivering in the February bleachers waiting. All of us re-living that last blackouted goggle pass thru the side door. A few of us tasting a bit of our breakfast.
Back of my harness snagged on sump’in going out the door — for a moment there it “felt real.”
Oh my Dad hated this training. HE HATED IT and we’d all know when it was coming. He didn’t learn to swim until he got to Annapolis and I laugh at him now saying I can’t think of a worse way to learn how to swim than having a Marine yell at you. These training exercises were his own personal hell. I think the only thing that got him through it was knowing there were divers down there and that he’d actually survived SERE school. When he was CO of his squadron he was supposed to go through the Helo dunk. I’m not sure how he did it, but there were always huge conflicts and he skirted it that last time.
He made sure all his kids were swimmers. We were all competitive swimmers and he never once griped during long drives for meets or as he sat in that hot sun as a stroke and lane judge. His kids were swimmers and it was all worth it.
Growing up in the LA beach area meant lots of time in the ocean, sometimes dealing with rips and powerful currents. After that, dunkers were a walk in the park…except for that part where some dufus’ put his boot in my face. No fun, that.
I hear New London has a new escape training tower, and the Brits’ combined submarine escape/exposure suits are, or will be, provided on all the boats. Both good things.
The original set up for submarine escape and rescue is pretty much due to Admiral Momsen. One of those genius folks that went to USNA in the 20′s. His fingerprints are all over a lot of stuff in the submarine world, all for the good, far as I know.
I went through the bobtailed syllabus in New London after the upper recompression chamber fire as part of Sub School, and then the full one in Pearl Harbor (to clear the p13 entry noting the full course was unavailable due to the fire after my first WesPac), well worth the time.
Got the Dilbert Dunker ride at Corpus Christi as a Mid.
“The most important thing to do for the welfare of your troops is realistic, demanding training” – Erwin Rommel. I quite agree.
Coast Guard helos, long ago, were advertised as able to land on the water. Whether or not they could subsequently shut the engine down and float upright, I’d be interested in knowing. Some of them had really big pontoons.
Jimmy Buffet got USN dunker training when he offered to do a concert on a carrier if they would fly him out in the back seat of an F-14.
He credits this training with saving his life when he subsequently flipped his seaplane over during a water takeoff abort.
Awesome!