SERE Training
 

YouTube - USAF SERE School

Can anyone tell if this video is showing aircrew SERE training or if its showing SERE Specialist training? I don't think it is mentioned in the video and it doesn't say in the youtube description. I'm guessing it is about SERE Specialists.

Did any of you guys have to make a meal out of bugs and raw rabbits at aircrew SERE? :eek: How about the downed helo water surivial sim? Looks pretty intimidating.

Yes, this is aircrew SERE. And when I did it (not complaining or bragging), we had 4-5 feet of snow and it was a mess. But at the same time, the distance we had to travel each day was lowered significantly. After you go through initial, you do refresher SEREs at your base. And that varies base to base from a classroom exercise to possibly going out in the local woods.

Interestingly enough, I've been through both the USN/USMC and USAF survival schools. I was a Pensacola guy. The water survival training that the USN/USMC is absolutely the best. Don't get confused by the gay lightshow the USAF has. The USN/USMC had tougher requirements for the dunkers. The USAF has the best ground/land/capativity training.

Much of this stuff is protected by confidentiality statements so I'm going to cut this short. hahah

KC10, are you saying you went through the USN SERE school in addition to the USAF SERE(equiv.) school or just the USN Water Survival/Aviation Physiology training as part of API/Primary in Pensacola? I was just wondering because the two services recognize each other's SERE programs which removes the requirement for instance for a USAF exchange aircrew to go through USN SERE if assigned to a deployable squadron.

I went through the USN/USMC API water survival and there was a land survival course we had to do out in the woods (near Corry Station??). When I went through API, the USAF was making a big issue about their guys getting injured going through the USN training. I know at some point, a lot of the requirements for the USAF was watered down (no pun).

Even more bizarre, I did Air Force Water Survival for Ejection Seats, before UPT, at the same water survival school the USN used in Pcola. Airforce students using Navy equipment. We are becoming the purple force.

Trust me when I tell you there is a BIG difference between Land survival in P'Cola and Navy SERE school!

"Starvival" in Pcola is how to not go hungry if you eject over LA (Lower Alabama). SERE is how to survive if you end up in bad guy land. Yes, big difference.

Hi!

USAF prison school was not fun at all, and I am one of the guys that had relatively little trouble with it.

The USAF dunker also went very smoothly for me. It IS psychologically difficult, and it was VERY hard for some guys. Once, I got another guy out, and then myself...he was just sitting there. Each time I got out of the pool, I waited 2-3 MINUTES for the last guy to come up....did not look nice for them!!!

cliff
LFW

So true! So True!

The Marines all have a great time a P'Cola after coming from TBS with the *almost* 3 days in the woods and that land nav exercise :rolleyes:

SERE school on the other hand - well I had SO many copies of that scattered in multiple places because I was not going to go back through that basic course again! :D I did mine in Brunswick, Maine in December so I got the Cold Weather Survival qual out of the way too. >BURRRR<
But like KC10 said - enough details.

The Marines use to run their own SERE course in Camp Lejuene many, many years ago. One of our Maintenance GySgts was an instructor there and every once in awhile he would slip into that old voice and chastise a new Lt if he wrote a poor MAF :eek:

USMCFLYR

The wter survival part of the video looks more like our standard water survival training required every 4 years than anything I did at SERE school.
It didn't even look like they turned the helo dunker upside down. The worst ride was the blind ride with an assigned exit. That is the one they you prayed your assigned seat was right next to the exit or in the cockpit rather than the very back of the Helo.

The helo rescue was more fun too in the USN training. I did D-Jet training after what we called was AI because I was going to NAS Corpus Christi for Primary. There we parasailed down in the P'Cola Bay and then a helo came by and picked us each up and then set us back down in the water and then a boat came by and picked us up too. Does anyone on here know if they are still doing it that way?

As far as the training being *watered down* - I do believe that the Water Survival and Physiology has gotten easier through the years - less demanding I mean. For instance I believe their is only ONE helo dunker ride required now. The scenario based training flows better though and you get don much quicker.

USMCFLYR

Thanks for the info, guys. It all looks pretty hard, but possibly fun in a masochistic sort of way.

A former Army helo guy I work with was telling me about the skinning rabbits and eating bugs/worms and I honestly he thought he was exaggerating a bit. But when in the video the instructor dumps open a sack of bunnies, I guess the guy was being pretty honest with me!

I haven't yet been hungry enough to eat bugs. :eek:

I did refresher last year. We did 2 rides in the newer dunker. I think they call this one the 9D6, the old being the 9D5(the green tin can). The difference with the new one to the old one? Doors are harder to open and the dunker could go any which way it feels like, sometimes the rescue swimmers will help it along as it wants to stay up right until its in the water. It sucked but seemed to be more realistic..I've never ditched in a helo thankfully so I wouldn't know.

The rabbit was the piece de resistance while on USAF world survival. The other stuff we had was pemmican and food bars from k-rats along with tea made from lichens on the trees. Average weight loss over the time in the woods was easily 10lbs. I went through world in January on the way to Vietnam. Very interesting POW scenarios.

Next, the 'snake school' in the Phillipines. More yucky stuff that was protein and learning how to get water. The big thing is water. You can go quite some time without food but water.. start getting dehydrated and your efficiency goes down quickly.

Water survival at Homestead. Fun times.. wish I knew then how good sushi is.

The one I wish I had done was desert survival.

The one thing you learn is you CAN survive in almost any environment but it is mostly a matter of being prepared and will.

I have a buddy going through RSS right now, and his group ended up doing it 7 times... I think he said a couple times they gave them blacked out masks and you just had to 'feel' your way out.

so what's the name of the survival school for army helo flyers?

In '86, part of the AF water survival was done in the cooling ponds of the nuke power plant at/near Homestead. We glowed a little afterward, but it only lasted a few hours......:)

I did AF Survival School at Fairchild in March.. BURRRRR ... temps ranged from 5 to as high as 35 the week we were in the field..... snow... ice.... it was a blast. Yes ...we killed the RABBIT!!! Glove skinned it... and ate it... hell on a dare I sucked the eyeball out of the socket and ate it.... Not many bugs in March in the Mountains north of Spokane. I lost about 8 or 9 pounds that week. POW training ...that was a whole story unto itself. We actually had a Navigator type who got pulled from the field and washed back a class..... dumbass had his shelter collapse on him in the middle of the night from the freezing rain/ice and he didnt get up and fix it.... .when we found him around 530am ( he didnt show at the fire ), he was hypothermic from the cold and getting wet.

I went to water survival class at Homestead. Now that was fun!!

Good times!!

Did survival at Stead AFB. They didn't call it SERE then. My wife (USAF RN) went through Artic survival at Eielson AFB, Alaska. THey snared rabbits after which a couple of fighter jocks asked, "What do we do now ?" She grew up on a farm where then did their own butchering. Five minutes later the rabbits were ready to cook and one of the fighter jocks was dry heaving in the snow bank. :)

The best are the boats they have for the training...big boats with "US Air Force" painted on the side.

The wildlife exhibit at the school in P'cola had lost its' snake (Eastern Pine Snake) that it had in its' version of a zoo. They told us that if we found one that they would trade us for it. I didn't give it much thought but I'll be darned if I didn't step right over on while I was on point during one of the land navs. Ended up that the trading for the snake ended up being about a 1/4 canteen cup of chicken borth :mad: We were thinking like an MRE each! We ended up eating a few other scrawney little sakes anyways. Got something caught in my teeth and felt like I was going to have to sent back to the dentist - but lucky I ended digging it out with a sharpen twig :cool: Not quite Rambo sewing himself up - but hey - makes for a memorable time!

USMCFLYR

That is good. I thought they had made it much to easy - but then again I like the water and was never worried about it. I know some others have a dread of the dunker and even the stroke test. One change that I did like though was that you were allowed to use your helmet and G-Suit for part of the treading water/stay afloat time. They increased the time - but allowed the use of improvised floatation devices.

I never ditched either, so I'll only take the stories of the guys/gals who had that said it was just like the dunker as the value of the trainer. Were your rides in the 9D6 blind folded and with specific exits or clear and any exit?

USMCFLYR

Do a lot of guys stress about riding the dunker? Looks like a mind game to do well.

Oh, and you guys cooked those rabbits, right?

The rabbits are cooked. The biggest reason for the rabbit is to get people exposure to killing and preparing an animal - obviously, most people have gotten no closer to butchering an animal than a grocery store. Many couldn't being themselves to kill the rabbits - you keep it alive for a few days and some become attached. The risk of illness and injury is managed - you drink water without filters, eat animals you trap (we got squirrel), etc - but you don't eat raw wild animals. As he said, you do eat worms and insects, etc if the opportunity arises just to get past the food aversions. I had to go through a semi-arid survival school (Camp Bullis, San Antonio) where we had to eat handfulls of grubs knocked out of a dead tree, grasshoppers (cooked), ants (not cooked), cactus, and we had to eat the worm that was the bait if we didn't catch a fish with it (I didn't catch a fish).

Yes - there are people that stress about the water survival in general - much less the help dunker. If you decide on going the military route - I definitely suggest that if you are not comfortable in the water, that you spend some time getting so. That would include the strokes (crawl, sidestroke, breast stroke are the big ones), treading water and drownproofing, being underwater in different positions, and being able to do certain actions while blindfolded underwater and feeling your way around. Think of it as multi-tasking - holding your breath and actually doing something with your hands. It seems that the strokes, the treading water and the helo dunker get the most people.

USMCFLYR

Now that is showing your age! ;)

Thanks LivingInMEM and USMCFLYR,

Real reason for my asking all of these questions is that I'm meeting with a recruiter soon to discuss getting on as a boomer in the guard. As long as I hear what I'm hoping to hear regarding financial assistance for education, I'll sign the dotted line. I just wanted to hear a little about the SERE experience.

I've never killed/skinned an animal but that sounds about 100x better to me than eating any sort of insect. Hate em. Oh well!

I grew up on the beach in Florida...swam and got knocked around in the ocean a good many times.

Our rabbit got free while we were shelter building. The thing was so domesticated that it just sat there on top of it's pit/cage until someone came over, grabbed it by the back of the neck, and stuffed it back inside. It did make a tasty meal that night though.

It's too bad we never managed to snare one of those squirrels that kept yelling at us every time we walked by.

Slightly ironic considering the orginal mission may involve killing people.

Amazingly - I flew the T-37 and T-38 in UPT.

I dunno - rabbits aren't shooting at us or setting up roadside bombs. Rabbits have no agenda.

I didn't eat any rabbit. I lasted fine on the granola bars they gave us. The other Lt and I got to split a PBJ for being the only two to make it all the way without capture. Cut way down on our jail time.:)

Bugs are fine when you get hungry enough, less effort involved to catch and prepare. I subsisted off of prickly pears...nobody else would touch them because of the thorns. I just dealt with them and lost half as much weight as anybody else.

I liked those little potato chips we made out of some root, though I didn't mind eating them raw either. There wasn't anything growing up in the Maine mountains in December - so I don't even remember what we did then. It was my first time (and last) on snow shoes though! I've never even skied - so I'm glad that I did the 'Summer Rock Package' at the Moutain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, CA instead of the 'Winter Package' which included more cold weather survival and cross country skiing and the likes. The one survival course that I thought sounded interesting, but never had the chance, was the Arctic Survival Training held by the Canadians for all of their people that forward deployed in support of NATO way up north! I thought I might get the chance when I applied for the Canadian Exchange - but no such luck (or was it luck??? ;))

USMCFLYR

Most of us go through life without any sort of real privation ever, those of you who may have reservations about eating certain things will quickly lose them in a few days. The mind and body will surprise you with it's innate will to survive that you may not be aware of at all right now.

Knowledge and experience can help, as can the experiences of others who may have learned over a period of years that they can survive what to most of us is an impossible situation.

Three days without any food, cold and high physical activity can change your outlook fairly quickly.

Are they still requiring the Mile swim in flight Gear? sans boots? I am a pretty good swimmer but there was a Marine in our class who swam freestyle the whole thing and crushed it.

Me too, and I graduated in 08. That actually got me interested in all the places we had pilot training in the T-37 era.....it's very interesting to see all the random UPT bases we once had.

Threat Awareness
 

Best not take any chances.....

YouTube - Holy Grail - Killer Bunny

YouTube - Monty Python-Holy Hand Grenade

What year did you go through :D

USMCFLYR