Air Force crews learn skills for surviving after plane crashes

COLVILLE NATIONAL FOREST, Wash. -- When fighter pilot Scott O'Grady's F-16 was shot down over Bosnia in 1995, he used what he learned here, in the dark forests outside Fairchild Air Force Base, to stay alive and evade capture for six days.

Now a new class of pilots, preparing to fight the war on terrorism, is following in his steps in the mountains of eastern Washington.

The course simulates what troops might find after bailing out of a crippled aircraft, from survival skills on the ocean to avoiding detection behind enemy lines.

The menu is sparse but varied for the six days the pilots are out in the Colville and Kaniksu national forests.

"Worms taste like dirt. Ants taste like lemon drops, and termites are kind of bitter," said first Lt. Mike Gommel, 26, of Las Vegas, recounting some of the meals during training. "I understand there's some good stuff coming up, like rabbit tonight."

When Gommel finishes the course next week, he will qualify to fly combat missions. He could be deployed to fly Air Force B-1 bomber 30,000 feet above Afghanistan, so what he learns here is meaningful, he said.

"It's something you want to do well, but you hope you never have to use it," he said.

The survival school at Fairchild trains 3,500 air crew members a year, mostly from the Air Force.

Testing skills

This week, 72 officers and air crew members are going through a 17-day Air Force Survival School course that teaches them what to do when things go wrong. By the time they leave, they will have learned how to how to find drinkable water, edible plants and animals, and how to build shelters and fires, along with learning skills to evade capture. About one-third of their time is spent in testing their skills in the wilderness.

Many of the pilots flying missions for the war in Afghanistan are graduates of the program, which is frequently required to qualify to fly combat aircraft.

Course graduate Capt. Dale Storr, a prisoner of Iraqi forces for more than a month after his A10-A "Warthog" was shot down during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, has returned to brief survival school instructors on what pilots could expect as POWs.

Col. Craig Jensen, commander of the survival school, said World War II prisoners of war have come to the school to see the mock POW camp and to share their experiences.

The Fairchild school -- the 336th Training Group -- also has detachments in Alaska, for Arctic survival training, and in Florida, for tropical training and for pilots and crew members of ejection-seat aircraft.

There is a water survival segment at Fairchild, where officers and air crews learn how to signal rescuers, among other skills.

Discomfort expected

Because airborne surveillance planes and satellites can pinpoint downed planes, most crews can expect just a short period of discomfort before being rescued, Tech. Sgt. Peter Kordelski told a group of students. The students were about to board a mock-up of a plane that would be dunked in a swimming pool.

"This is the new millennium," he said. "I'm thinking, if you've been out there for 24 hours, then you've been out there too long, or we lost the war."

After being dunked in the pool, first Lt. Jeremy Morrison, an instructor pilot from Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma, scrambled with his crewmates into 20-person life rafts in pitch darkness while loud speakers blared the sounds of a raging storm.

Morrison said he now feels confident he can survive after ditching a plane in the sea.

"It's not fun, but very, very necessary," he said as he dried off between sessions of the water survival class.

Established at Fairchild in 1966, the survival school gives students skills they may never have to use.

"I've had students who have never seen a tree before, other than in Central Park," said Sgt. Tom Bonsant, who runs the outdoor school. "What we're trying to do is to give them the confidence that, should it be needed, they'll say, 'I've done this before."