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Post by nikeajax on May 1, 2013 10:06:38 GMT -8
Bob, WOW--sounds scary! My wife and I are fascinated by the Cold War-era, hence my handle, Nike Ajax; all the stuff I've seen and read about, all of you guys were trained/taught, if you made it through and graduated, NEVER PANIC! I love to watch vintage film footage, especially when there's audio to go with it, because the person's voice is always just a drone, never showing emotion which might cause things to become even worse should they get excited. Then you have Hollywood, which makes for an exciting movie, but never realistic--SNORT!
Jaybird
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Post by oldsquid on May 2, 2013 10:04:06 GMT -8
Jaybird,
Well, I don't recall 'scary' in that adventure, just more of getting things straightened out.
Again, they say "you fight the way you train" and in diving I believe it is critically important how you get trained. I wondered over the years how non-military divers got trained and reading other posts on this forum sheds some interesting light on that.
There is a youtube video available of the dive phase of the Navy's BUDS Seal training that shows pretty clearly what the training regime is - quite similar to UWSS, although in that video they spend a lot of time 'counseling' guys who are marginal in order to help them graduate. When I went through UWSS there was zero counseling - you either did the evolution successfully or you shipped back out to the fleet that afternoon. That was especially true for the harassment in the pool. If your head popped above water during that test you just kept on going - back to your home post. There must be a good reason for the change in approach. One hopes.
Since I left the Navy and diving behind in 1973 I have come across three other Navy SCUBA divers in person. One had much the same experience I had just 15 years later (and worked for me in one of the corporations). This fellow became a PADI diver and instructor and still dives. Another was a former Captain in Army Special Forces who went through the Navy's Combat Diver School in the 1980s which was essentially identical to UWSS but included the Draeger. He did a lot of escape trunk exits from submarines and had some interesting stories. The third was a guy who was an officer on an FBM submarine like mine who was also the dive officer - his boat had been converted to a SEAL operations platform and I met him about 10 years ago. He had some fascinating pictures to show.
I am truly thankful we made it out of the Cold War without firing those missiles - wouldn't have been much of the world left as we now know it.
BR,
Bob
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Post by SeaRat on May 2, 2013 12:19:52 GMT -8
Bob, I was a USAF Pararescue trainee when I went through the U.S. Navy Underwater Swimmers School is Key West. That was 1967, and we had a few interesting situations develop. My dive buddy, Robert Means was leading that compass course where I took the photo of him, and he stuck his hand into the bottom, into a crevice in a rock and a fish's spine stuck him. He said it hurt a lot, but he was able to continue training. For those of you who don't know the terms Bob used a few posts back, you can review the terminology here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_slang_termsWe were in pretty good shape before going through USS, as we had already gone through a month of pararescue pre-conditioning training, and then deconditioned a bit by going through the U.S. Army's Jump School at Ft. Benning. USS was harder than Ft. Benning, and I remember us running through the streets of Key West, singing at the top of our lungs early in the morning, then going to the beach and running through the sand. When we were still running pretty well, the instructor took us into knee-deep water, then led us to a back alley where we did 8-count burpees. He followed that up with a reverse "rest" position (where our limbs and head were skyward, with our backs to the ground). It was called the "dying cockroach" position. I heard beside me this "Aaaaarrrrrrahhhh!" and a thump, and my buddy, Bob Means had flopped sidewards into the ground. The instructor, obviously really upset, came over and demanded, "What's the problem?" Means answered, "I died, Sir!" and everyone simply cracked up. John
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Post by SeaRat on May 2, 2013 12:20:51 GMT -8
I posted twice, so I will simply add another set of photos from UWSS. John On the way out to the dive, we got our sunburns. [URL=http://s3.photobucket.com/user/yaquinag uy/media/USS--DeepDiveDescent.jpg.html] [/URL] Here's the descent down the anchor line. We are following the instructor, in the white doubles. On the botom, for our deep qualifying dive. The instructor is the diver, again with the white tanks. Ready for an exit, we had to time it with the waves at the surface. Exit, this time from the surface. John
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Post by duckbill on May 2, 2013 20:37:40 GMT -8
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Post by oldsquid on May 3, 2013 5:03:44 GMT -8
John, Those are remarkable photographs. I have never seen photos of UWSS that covered it so well. The only shots I have are a couple on the LC handling our tanks, none of the actual dives. Thanks for sharing those! In our class the sailors were definitely in the worst physical shape when the class began. I had just completed a sub patrol of two plus months, then the usual month of R&R after patrol when I showed up in Key West. I was in average condition, I guess, although the reason I got to know the Marine officer with the missing foot piece was that I was running the base runs back at the end of the back at the beginning of the school. I improved rapidly and was middle of the pack by the end of the four weeks. In terms of prior physical conditioning, I had played high school sports (football and wrestling) and they certainly helped, although that had been four years earlier. I think trying to endure that training with no prior athletic experience would have made it very, very difficult. The 5 mile base runs with the obstacles kicked my butt, for sure, but made it through. The Marines were hard-core tough guys, the PJs hung together and I didn't get to learn much about them. It was well after my service years before I even knew what PJs do (did) - I am totally impressed! The Marines (at least some of them) would go out to the bars at night and one guy just showed up in time to start PT each morning. Crazy, tough guys... The Army Rangers were very tough as well. I had never heard of a Ranger until I got to UWSS. My father had been a Major in the USMC and fought on Guadalcanal as an LT with the 1st Marine Division so I had a very healthy regard for a Marine, although I had never heard of a Recon Marine until I met my swimbuddy. Since I had no idea what a Ranger was, I asked a couple of them who and what they were - they just looked at me and said, "We can take care of ourselves." Quite unassuming and totally confident guys. Just about all of the Marines and Rangers had already done at least one tour in Viet Nam. Not sure about the PJs but I assume that was part of their initial training. Like I mentioned, UWSS later apparently morphed into Combat Diver's School with continued mixed service training classes. On the other hand, we sailors were a different lot entirely. A couple of us were off the boats, one guy was a rich kid who was a Hospital Corpsman and showed up with his ski boat and trailer and a couple of other guys were from the surface fleet. We hung around together on the weekends and skin-dived on the coral reef, with the exception of the boat owner - he must have had other opportunities. Duckbill, thanks for the reference for that video series on the SEAL BUDS training. I think it may be identical to what is available free on youtube. The 5th series video on dive training is the one I was thinking of and I will include the link here. I just re-watched it to see if I had the same sense about it and yes, for sure the instructors were doing everything humanly possible to get those guys through. UWSS was basically identical training in terms of content, but when I went through there was none of the extra effort to pass guys. John's example of the 'dying cockroach' didn't seem to fit my class - maybe we just had a bunch of hard-ass instructors or something. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhLHuEhPdF0&feature=youtu.beThis is bringing back a lot of memories I haven't dredged up for decades. Bob
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Post by nikeajax on May 3, 2013 6:00:37 GMT -8
While waiting for my wife I thought I'd check in...
Bob you wrote: "Quite unassuming and totally confident guys." I used to have a friend, I lost track of him unfortunately, who was a USMC-sniper in that Grenada-thing. Yep, that is my friend James to-a-T: mother of pearl, you would never know, but once he let you into his world, it makes sense. You can ALWAYS tell a good military guy by the way he, or she, caries themselves. My wife and I were out driving, and we saw two older guys, mid-70's, walking with canes, and movin' slow: I mentioned to my wife that those guys had to be ex-military, my wife said she was thinking the exact same thing. Her father was at the Battle of the Bulge...
Jaybird
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Post by Linda on May 3, 2013 9:30:20 GMT -8
Just wanted to point out, you can imbed video right into your post by clicking on the "insert video" icon. It's a little black and white thingy, next to the "insert image" icon in the reply window.
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Post by SeaRat on May 3, 2013 18:49:21 GMT -8
Well, since Linda put the video of Navy SEALS BUDS training, I thought you'd like to see some of the training that Pararescue goes through.
Bob, in regards to the shenanigans that Bob Means pulled, you have to realize that we were USAF in a Navy program, and the Navy instructors were trying to get us to quit. We had gone through some rough training already (see above), and we wanted to tell those instructors that we would not quit no matter what. At one point the instructors got to me a bit, and because I did not do what they wanted put me into "special PT" with about four other students. I did everything they requested, and more. If they dropped us for pushups, we always gave at least one more "for Pararescue," shouting it out as we did. They finally gave up on getting me to wash out, and I went back to the regular group. We did what we could to irritate these instructors, to get them to try us harder, and we ate it up!
There were few others like Bob Means though. You might remember the "flutter kicks" we had to do on our backs with the instructors nearby. For those who don't know, "flutter kicks" are when you are on your back on land (sometimes on your twin 90s) and the instructor demands heads, arms and legs up, with the legs doing flutter kicks. Here is a paragraph from my draft book, Between Air and Water, the Memoir of a USAF Pararescueman[/B]:
This was part of the "game" we played with the instructors at the UWSS. The Navy guys could not understand what was happening, so we just let it go. However, we had a bunch of us in the class, so we made up perhaps a majority of that particular class.
By the way, I served on a temporary duty assignment (TDY) with the First Marine Division, First Medical Balaton Field Hospital in DaNang, Vietnam for about two weeks in 1971. I helped with the initial treatment in their ER, and got to know some of the people there. Marines are quite something too.
John
PS, Linda, this thread has become more than a welcome thread for Bob. Maybe we could copy it or move it into the General section so that it will be available, and title it "U.S. Naval Underwater Swimmers School".
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Post by Linda on May 4, 2013 18:37:53 GMT -8
Done! Actually, John, should it be in the instruction section? Your call....
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Post by SeaRat on May 4, 2013 20:13:02 GMT -8
Instruction is fine with me too. Anyone else have a thought about this?
John
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Post by oldsquid on May 5, 2013 10:21:07 GMT -8
John,
That is a really good video on the PJ's training. Your forthcoming book sounds interesting, do you have a publish date for it yet?
Although not a PJ, I came across an AF guy years later (early '90's) who had been in some kind of elite unit that was sent in to recover highly sensitive (i.e., classified) electronic gear from downed aircraft in SE Asia. He also went through some rigorous training and did some very interesting and off-beat things in the course of his service. I suspect he would have had dive training as well given proximity of the South China Sea to do recovery of sunken aircraft but don't recall if that was indeed the case. Can you shed light on that program?
Finally, to Jaybird's earlier comment about the unassuming nature of special forces types, the most amazing example I personally experienced was in Phoenix about 15 years ago. I was working at a large semiconductor company and one of the other engineers was very highly regarded for his technical competency. It turned out his hobby was building and racing nitro-fueled dragsters at the raceway in Phoenix. But what was most remarkable was finding out this guy had been a Green Beret in SE Asia and done a lot of 'sneak & peak' ops in the Golden Triangle, sans ID, etc. You would have never guessed it just talking with him about work and hobbies. Then he went on to explain that he had been one of the earliest Delta Force candidates and had made it through their screening until they dropped him into the mountains of West Virginia on their famous hike-to-check-in points. He got close to the end when they pulled him because they figured if they let him keep going he would potentially kill himself with the effort. It was only this year that I heard for the second time about that DF mountain hike in Dalton Fury's book - like the one PJ in the video above who was pulled from the program for his own safety, it is possible to drive the body so hard it can't handle the stress.
I look forward to reading your book.
Bob
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Post by nikeajax on May 5, 2013 17:50:53 GMT -8
So um, Bob, if'n ya ain't got no more gear, what kind did'ja use? From what I was able to gather, mostly from John, the USN used US Divers Conshelf and Calypso regs.
A while back, my wife and I went to Cape Canaveral to see a shuttle launch-total joke and 3/4's: never do that again... anyway, I noticed some of the old timer astro's used Scubapro gear that we saw on display. Kinda funny, we couldn't help but notice EVERYONE grumbling about the old stuff, they wanted to see stuff about the Space Shuttle, and WE, wanted to see, very badly, all the swell old Project Mercury, Gemini and Apollo relics...
Jaybird
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Post by SeaRat on May 6, 2013 17:32:50 GMT -8
Bob, I decided to load a few more photos, just to get used to doing it. There is a large button at the top right titled "Edit Attachments" which is where you can load from your desktop. This way, if the PhotoBucket site goes down, some of these photos will stay with this website. I have one of the UWSS students exiting on the beach, and one of the twin 90s as they used to be. Concerning your question about personnel who went in to recover aircraft, these were probably air commandos. The Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service did have some of these duties too, as in the early days we conducted spacecraft recovery and were on standby alert for every astronaut launch from Mercury through Apollo, and I believe for the launch of the Space Shuttle too. But the work you are talking about was probably Air Commandos. Here is a Wikipedia link to Air Commandos: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Special_Operations_WingJohn Attachments:
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Post by oldsquid on Feb 23, 2016 14:37:27 GMT -8
Been a long while since I have visited but thought some might enjoy a look at how the USN UWSS evolved and what it produces today: www.divertough.com/#introEach podcast they have a segment on their diving experiences on a Fast Attack Submarine they served on. Not quite vintage, yet, but they'll get there! Bob
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