For those I love, I sacrifice

Pararescue is one of the most important jobs in our U.S. military and is one of the toughest jobs to get into and become a pararescue jumper.  They have been around for a while and have a good history. Some of their most daring missions happened during the Vietnam War but the need for pararescue jumpers have been there since World War 2.  They have truly mastered the craft now with all of the gear and technology there is today.  I will discuss some missions that parescuemen have completed and some missions they have been on in recent years.  

One of the most famous PJ’s to have ever been in the career field is William Pitsenbarger.   Flying on almost 300 rescue missions in Vietnam, Bill Pitsenbarger risked his life almost daily during the war rescuing downed soldiers and fliers. On April 11, 1966, the 21-year-old, known as "Pits" to his friends, was killed while defending some of his wounded comrades. For his bravery and sacrifice, he was posthumously awarded the nation's highest military decorations, the Medal of Honor and the Air Force Cross, becoming the first enlisted airman to receive the medals posthumously.

Pararescue Jumpers were also in big battles like the Battle of Mogadishu or most people know it by “Black Hawk Down.” Technical Sergeant Tim Wilkinson was the first one to receive the Air Force Cross since the Vietnam War for his actions during the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. Ty Burrell portrayed Wilkinson in the 2001 film Black Hawk Down that chronicled the events of the Battle of Mogadishu.

Duane Hackney is another famous Air Force Para Jumper fro being the most decorated airman in all the Air Force.  He became a legend in the rescue world; he earned four Distinguished Flying Crosses, for specific acts of heroism, and 18 Air Medals, many for single acts of valor. Then he received the Air Force Cross, for which he was the first living recipient, the Silver Star, the Airman's Medal, the Purple Heart, and several foreign decorations.  He is a true inspiration to all people who have and want to be pararescue jumpers.

There are still a lot of schools for me to talk about in pararescue but I want to step away from that this week and talk about the history of pararescue. Pararescue has been a career in the Air Force for a long time and the need for pararescue has been there before the Air Force even existed.  It’s one of the most important career field that is out there in the military and has been ever since World War 2 when pilots would be shot down behind enemy lines all the time and no one to save them.  

It all began in August in 1941 over an uncharted jungle near the China-Burma when 21 people had to bail out of a C-46.  The crash site was remote and the only way of getting help to the survivors was through paradrop.  Lieutenant Colonel Don Fleckinger and two medical corpsmen volunteered for the assignment.  For an entire month, the men, who were aided by the natives, cared for the injured until they were brought out of the jungle and into safety.

After this mission, the need for a highly trained rescue force was found clear and so Pararescue was born.  Since the event happened there have been thousands of rescues and all around the world.  There have been many airmen, soldiers, and even civilians who have experienced rescues from them first hand.  One thing that many people didn’t know is that on every shuttle launch into space, there is a pararescue team on standby in case of a problem occurring with the shuttle.  They have been in places like New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, Japan during the Tsunami, and of course in Afghanistan to save soldiers.  Some of the most important and inspiring saves have happened during the Southeast Asia conflicts like the Vietnam War. Pararescuemen don’t just save during wartime but peacetime too.  PJ’s wear a maroon beret.  The beret symbolizes the blood sacrificed by Pararescuemen and their devotion to duty by aiding others in distress.

           After army airborne parachutist school, there is a one-day course called navy egress school.  I will talk about navy egress school about what it is and what it is for. It’s a very short school but has many benefits to the future of pararescue.  This school is not just meant for pararescue but anybody that rides in some type of aircraft in the military.

           Navy egress school is built to train people what to do in case their aircraft crashed in the water and how to escape this incident with your life.  It is only a one-day course so not that much information.  It is a simple school but when some people see it, it can be kind of a stressful school.  Navy egress school is held in Pensacola naval air station in Florida.

           At the start of the day you will be in the classroom and learn what to do in these emergences.  They will teach you when the plane or helicopter goes down in the water that you need to wait until the plane is completely submerged until you try and escape or else you will be thrown around in the plane from the water when it rises through the plane.  Part of this is due to the oscillation of the waves and the sinking of the aircraft can cause a lot of spinning.  After the classroom stuff they take you to a pool where they will have a part of an airplane that is attached to a crane type thing that will submerge it and spin it around and then you have to escape the aircraft.  It is a very simple task but can make some people scared since many have a fear of being submerged in water will strapped into a seat.  After you make it out of the aircraft you pass the course and move on too the next school.

Combat dive school took me a long time to talk about but the next school should go a little bit quicker.  After dive school all pararescue jumpers move on to airborne school so they can learn how to static line jump.  I will give a little bit of a brief summary and what it is like in airborne school and what you do in airborne school.  Most of my information comes from PJ’s themselves or documentaries about PJ’s. Mike Maroney is a big source for me becomes he talks about his experience all the time when he was a PJ.

           Airborne school is an army school.  What I hear is that the PJ’s like to call this air force appreciation school because the air force gets a lot more funding and they say the food is better as well as the living conditions.  Since combat dive school is a special operation school, they have good instructors and great food so that does not prepare you for airborne school at all.  Airborne school happens at Fort Benning in Georgia so depending on the time of year you go it can be really hot or really cold and can make your time there really miserable.

           The main objective of airborne school is static line jumps.  Static line jumps is when you are in a big cargo plane with your team, or “stick” as they are called,  and you jump out of the plane.  The cord that opens your parachute is attached to a line in the plane so when you jump out it automatically pulls your chute for you.  Static line jump is mainly meant for low altitude jumps into enemy positions and is meant to put a lot of soldiers on the ground as quickly as possible.  This usually happens when there is a chance of taking anti aircraft fire.  You use a different kind of chute when you static line jump instead of free fall.   In free fall you use a parasail that you can control and can give you a slow descent or fast descent.  The chute you use during static line jumps were built for paratroopers and are not controllable and can drop you from the sky really fast.  People can get injured very easy from static line jumps because they can fall into trees or just not have the right technique to land.

I am back again talking aboutpararescue and combat controllers at the combat dive school in Florida.  So far I have talked about the first week and the first test that you go through in combat dive school.  I have also talked about the one-man competency test as well as the 90 foot open ocean dive that you have to do.  I am finally going to wrap up the rest of the combat dive school this week and talk about the final mission that you have to do to pass the combat dive school. The pararescue candidates have already completed the course and now it is just the combat controllers.

           The reason why pararescumen are finished before the combat controllers is because PJ’s only have to learn their equipment for rescues but combat controllers are deployed with SEAL (sea, air and land) teams and Special Forces teams so they have to be able to go wherever they go which would be deep under water.  When you are on those missions you have to be able to use special equipment so the combat controllers have to specialize in new equipment that they haven’t learned in the previous weeks.

           With the last week in the course, the combat controllers need to learn stealth underwater system and tactics, this will be the finally part of the course.  The combat controllers learn advanced SCUBA system called “closed circuit” which complex rebreather equipment.  These draeger rebreathers cycle oxygen so no bubbles can be seen from the surface.  This makes the operator much harder to detect and when you are a special operator, stealth is key.

           Now I am sure each mission varies from class to class but I will tell you the example that I have seen.  The class was given a mission to infiltrate by water and gain access to a container ship.  The ship then would be searched for a briefcase containing critical intelligence. They must do this entire mission undetected.  Their plan was to go 2000 yards by zodiac and then swim 1000 yards and finish the last 1000 yards subsurface to the target.  Then they will board the ship from the side and search the boat.  One team searches while the other team holds security.  In this class the instructors had a navy black hawk helicopter fly over while the team was swimming their first 1000 yards.  They did this to indicate they the team could be compromised so the team went subsurface early to stay out of sight.  The team made it to the ship, boarded the ship and then searched the ship for the briefcase.  They ended up finding the briefcase and safely made it back into the ocean to retrieve their gear and went home without a scratch.  They all graduated the next day and then they are on to the next school.

So I am back and we are still talking about Combat Dive School.  I feel like I have been talking on this subject forever but it is an awesome topic to talk about.  I was talking about the one-man competency test last week.  This week I will talk about the 95 foot dive you do during the school and if I don’t ramble on forever then I should be able to talk about the ship raid training mission the combat controller students do at the end of the course but I probably will ramble on for a while.

           Before you head out to the dive, you learn a crucial emergency procedure called “buddy breathing”.  This is kind of similar to the one at indoc but without the harassment and with oxygen tanks instead of snorkels.  When a diver runs out of air at depth, the instinct is to bolt quickly to the surface but doing that could be fatal.  Buddy breathing allows 2 divers to take turns with an air source and return to the surface safely.  A controlled ascent must be done properly because if you have too much air in your lungs they could explode.  Once you master this procedure then you are ready for the deep dive test.  A 95 foot dive into the deep, cold, murky waters of the open ocean.

           The 95-foot deep dive test starts early in the morning. You drive 2 miles off shore in a boat to an orange buoy.  When they tell you to enter the water, you will swim to the buoy.  The orange buoy marks the spot where they will descend 95 feet to your target using a guide rope.  The lead instructor takes them down into the murky depths.  Visibility usually maxes out at 15 feet.  You dive to an old bridge section where you will stay for 25 cold, dark, minutes.  With the atmospheric pressure, the limited visibility, and the freezing cold temperatures, everything can be distracting.  At that depth you have to stay focused or something can go horribly wrong.  After the 25 minutes are up, you will meet back up at your rally point and ascend back to the surface.  Once all of this is finished you will go back to shore and the pararescue students will be ready for receiving their open circuit certification.  The combat controllers still have to stay for another 2 weeks to train with some highly specialized diving equipment.  

           Last week I was talking about Combat Dive school for the air force.  I talked about the first week and a little bit of the training they do during that weeks as well as their first test that is called surface checks.  Combat Dive school is a long 5 and a half weeks but from what I have heard is an extremely enjoyable course.   This week I will keep talking about Dive school and the one-man competency test in the course.  I will also talk about the 90 foot dive they do in the training as well.

           After doing their surface check tests they proved they can survive on the surface but the next test is a whole new hell waiting for them on the bottom of the pool.  At the beginning of week three its time for the men to see if they can handle themselves underwater or if they will be going home.  This test will reveal who can survive the very worst of diving conditions and who can’t.  The test is called the one-man competency test.   You start by descending 12 feet to the bottom of the pool.  A safety diver will be beside you at all times in case of an emergency.  If you ascend prematurely or grab the safety diver’s regulator, then you fail.  The exact length of the test is classified but it is long enough to test your mental strength in the water.

           “They surge you, they basically use you like a basketball on the bottom of the pool.”  This is what one of the airmen said when describing the one-man competency test. At the bottom of the pool you have an oxygen tank and the instructors will constantly take you and slash you around and bounce off the bottom of the pool with extreme aggressiveness and violence. They will take the regulator out of your mouth and tie it behind your head and around your tank.  You have to trace the source, untie the knot and get your regulator back in your mouth and then the process begins again.  The instructors are trying to make you hypoxic which is basically you on the verge of blacking out because of the lack of oxygen. The instructors will time your exhale and then rip the regulator out of your mouth so you will be the next 20 to 30 seconds with no breath and being pushed back and forth by an instructor.

           At the end of one-man competency, there is one last thing to do.  The instructors will tie your regulator one last time but this knot is going to be unrecoverable.   They will not be able to untie the knot so they will have to know to ditch their gear and get to their air source.  Many people get confused on when to ditch their gear.  Sometimes they ditch too soon or won’t ditch at all when they need to ditch.  If you ditch your gear to soon then you fail, if you ditch to late then you put yourself at risk of blacking out.  This test is usually the make or break for most of the candidates going through the course and they say it is the toughest test in the school.

Air Force Combat Dive school is the next school you go to after graduation.  It is a grueling 5-week course that can claim a third of the class on average.  This course focuses mainly on water skills and teaches the students how to use scuba gear and how to be very comfortable in the water.  The help teach you what to do if something goes wrong and how to fix it. You share the class with combat controllers.  Combat controllers come to this course because they are usually assigned to be apart of seal teams or special forces teams so they need to be just as good or better in the water and to know their gear just like Navy Seals or Army special forces.

           For the first 7 days the men face a brutal marathon of hardcore PT or physical training in the pool.  They are in the water for 10 plus hours a day, everyday.  They train non-stop swimming hundreds of laps, treading water endlessly and building extreme endurance in the water. The students are not being tested the first week.  The instructors just want to see what they are working with.  They learn the limits they can push the human body underwater very fast.

           The first test is called surface checks.  You are paired with a buddy during this test. You start by jumping into the water with over 60 pounds of scuba gear on and then you start to check your buddy’s gear. It is a simple task made extremely difficult by one thing.  You must do this while treading water for 5 minutes with no flotation.  If you don’t go through your checks flawlessly or touch the wall during the test then you are out of the course.  With there not being any flotation, the test is equivalent to treading water while holding a 10 pound weight over your head for 5 minutes. It is a 2-chance test.  If you fail the first time then you get a do over but if you fail your second attempt then you are out of the course.

           So I am going to keep talking about indoc this week. Hopefully I can finish talking about it this week because there is definitely a lot of things I still want to talk about.  Last week I talked the crawl, walk, run phases of indoc and a lot of water events that you have to do in indoc.  This week I am going to talk about some things you do outside the water and ETD or Extended Training Day.  I will also talk about the final evaluations you have to do to graduate from indoc.

           Indoc is located at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.  They offer a winter, spring, fall, and summer course.  They say the summer course is the worst because as most of us know that the heat in Texas can be brutal.  Now try and imagine having to run miles and miles everyday in the Texas heat for hours with full fatigues on which are long sleeve camouflage shirts with pants and combat boots.  That would be pretty awful but you also have to do it with 75-pound backpacks on. That is an average day at indoc.

           After about 5 or 6 weeks into indoc there is a called Extended Training Day.  A horribly brutal 21-hour day that can make half of the class quit easily.  Some might have seen a little bit of it on Surviving the Cut.  If you haven’t seen it then I recommend going to watch it.  This day is meant to make the men suffer and to cut out the weakest of the men.  It is a constant, non-stop 21-hour exercise starting at 2 a.m. with instructors screaming in your face and loud sirens.  Once you complete this day you are given a blue ascot to symbolize that you are dedicated to becoming a pararescuemen.

One of the toughest events in Extended Training Day is called the Mogadishu Mile.  It is a one mile run that has to be completed in under 10:00 minutes.  This might sound pretty easy but this has to be completed with 75-pound rucksacks on and carrying a stretcher with a 200-pound dummy. Not easy tasks to complete on a hot summer day in Texas were the temperature could reach 112 degrees.  If the team fails to complete the event in the amount of time given then the event will be repeated until completion.

           So I am just got continue where I left off last week. I was talking about indoc and all the things that you have to do to complete it.  I finished with drown proofing on the last post but that is just one thing in a variety of workouts you have to do in indoc.  The pool workouts are what I hear are some of the toughest parts of indoc.  I listed a lot of things you do in the pool in the last post like buddy breathing, underwaters, 10 ups, treading water and then of course water confidence.

           When indoc starts off, they start with a crawl, walk, run type of training.  Now even though you may only be in the crawl phase of the training, over half the class will quit with in those 2 weeks of the crawl phase.  Each phase will last about 2 weeks with the run phase lasting 3. The thing that gets tougher in each week that makes most people quit is buddy breathing.  In buddy breathing you and a partner have a snorkel that you pass back and forth after each breath.  While you are passing the snorkel back and forth and instructor will come up and harass both of you while you are trying to breath through the snorkel. It only lasts 2 minutes but within those 2 minutes you are being dunked to the bottom of the pool, sucking in water, being twisted around and slammed into your buddy.  It starts with mild harassment at the crawl phase but once you get to the run phase you will have full harassment and it is scary to watch.

           Underwaters and 10-ups is another thing that will really get to people.  You swim a 25 meter underwater every 3 minutes at the start of the training but by the end you need to be doing them every minute and a half.  10-ups are quite similar but much harder.  Before you start your underwater you do 10 pushups then do your 25 meter underwater and once you get to the other side you get to look forward to another 10 pushups.  10 pushups doesn’t sound like a lot but after a couple of hours you feel like you’re going to die.

INDOC

 When trying to become a pararescuemen, you have to go through some of the hardest training schools the military has to offer.  To become a pararescueman you have to do around 2 years of training, which is called the pipeline.  The pipeline has many different schools you have to go through.  Before you can really get into the schools that make PJ’s so good at their jobs, you first must go through a 9 week course from hell called indoc or indoctrination.

           Indoc is the first step on a long road to becoming a PJ. At the beginning of indoc you usually start out with a class of upwards of 130 students.  In many classes, after a week of training you could be down to a class of fewer than 60.  Indoc has an average dropout rate of 90%.  That is higher than the navy seals dropout rate.

           Before you start indoc, you first must pass the PAST test or Physical Ability and Stamina Test.  The PAST test includes push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, 1.5 mile run, a 500 meter swim and 2x25 meter underwater swim.

2x25m Underwater Swim: Pass or Fail 10:00 Rest o

Swim: 500m = 10:07 30:00 Rest

Run: 1.5m = 9:47 10:00 Rest

Pull ups: 10 (1 min) 2:00 Rest

Sit-Ups: 54 (2 min) 2:00 Rest

Push-Ups: 52 (2 min)

In the 2x25 meter swim you swim underwater for 25 meters then freestyle swim back after touching the wall.  3 minutes after the start of your first underwater you will do it one more time.  If you pass all of the requirements then you may end up with a slot into indoc.

My name is Shane Brewer. Ever since I was a freshman in high school I wanted to join the Air Force. I grew up around the Air Force so it has always been something I have been interested in. I wanted to do something great for my country and I stumbled across Air Force Pararescue. For those of you that do not know much about the military, there are five branches. The five branches are the Navy, Army, Marines, Coast Guard and Air force. Most people don’t know much about air force special operations or that it even exists but it has some of the most important jobs in the military. There are four jobs in the air force special operations command or AFSOC. Combat Controllers, Pararescue, TACP (Tactical Air Control Party) and SOWT (Special Operations Weather Team).

Combat Controllers are basically air traffic controllers in hostile areas. They establish landing zones for planes as well as call in airstrikes. They can be assigned to anything from a Navy Seal to an Australian SAS team. Combat controllers motto is “First There” because they are always the first one inserted into any battlefield. Pararescue has a very different job. While combat controllers have the job of eliminating enemies, pararescue has the job of saving allies.

Pararescue jumpers also known as PJ’s are the best combat search and rescue (CSAR) operators in the world. They can save anybody in practically any scenario. They saved countless pilots that were shot down in Vietnam but they have also done many saves in world tragedies like Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in Japan. It is a very unknown career in the military but to me is the most rewarding thing you can do.

While Combat Controllers are able to be air traffic controllers as well as call in air strikes. TACP or Tactical Air Control Party only calls in air strikes. Usually two airmen are assigned to an army team so they may call in close air support. While their training my not be as long as combat controllers, they are still highly trained at what they do.

Special operations weather teams sound like a joke but I can promise you that those guys have very important job. The weather can have a huge impact on very important missions. When a big mission is in the works, everything needs to be calculated for the best odds of success. SOWT will be deployed before mission into hostile environments so they can get weather readings. They need to know when is the best time to launch the mission. They are basically meteorologists with guns. You probably won’t see Al Roker doing what they do.