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USAF Survival School (SERE)
Combat Survival Training is established to
provide aircrews and other designated personnel procedures and
techniques in the use of equipment and employment of survival
principles. We believe all Air Force aircrew members, officers, and
enlisted personnel are entitled to the best education and training
possible to support their operational duties. In support of this, the
336th Training Group is committed to providing this training to prepare
aircrew members for the eventualities of flight, to include surviving in
any type of environment regardless of friendly or unfriendly conditions.
The 336th Training Group is the sole manager of US Air
Force survival training. Its mission is to give aircrews the means to
survive "anywhere, anytime." The group is located at Fairchild Air Force
Base, WA, with one subordinate unit at Naval Air Station Pensacola, FL,
and one at Eielson Air Force Base, AK.
The 336th Training Group, U.S. Air Force Survival School, provides
Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training primarily to
aircrew members. Instruction concentrates on the principles, techniques,
and skills necessary to survive in any environment and return home.
The group incorporates the heritage of the 336th Bombardment Group
(Medium)--later, the 336th Air Refueling Wing, (Heavy)--and the 3636th
Combat Crew Training Wing. The 336th Bombardment Group (Medium) was
activated on 15 July 1942. Assigned to MacDill Field, FL, it operated
the B26 Marauder medium bomber, training replacement crews for
operational units. The group relocated to Lake Charles, LA, where it was
disbanded on 1 May 1944.
Instructors assigned to the Survival School teach seven different
courses to approximately 6,500 students annually. Five of the seven
courses are taught at Fairchild. The other two courses are conducted at
NAS Pensacola, FL and Eielson AFB, AK.
Combat Survival Training, which all Air Force aircrew members
must attend, is conducted by the 22nd Training Squadron. Forty-nine
classes are taught per year, with each class lasting 17 days. The
majority of the course is taught at Fairchild; however, six days are
spent in the mountains of the Colville and Kaniksu National Forests,
approximately 70 miles north of Fairchild. Instruction at Fairchild
begins with classroom training on the physical and psychological
stresses of survival. This is followed by hands-on training in post
ejection procedures and parachute landing falls, various life support of
equipment procedures, survival medicine, and recovery device training.
Students then transition to the mountains where they receive additional
training including shelter construction, food procurement and
preparation, day and night land navigation techniques, evasion travel
and camouflage techniques, ground-to-air signals, and aircraft vectoring
procedures. Finally, students are returned to Fairchild and given
training in conduct after capture.
The SERE Training Instructor Course, conducted by the 66th Training
Squadron, is also taught at Fairchild. This is a five-and-one-half-month
program designed to teach future survival instructors how to instruct
aircrew members to survive in any environment. The course includes
instruction in basic survival, medical, navigation skills, overland
travel, evasion, arctic survival, teaching techniques, rough land
evacuation, coastal survival, tropics/river survival, and desert
survival. Basic survival, navigation skills, overland travel, evasion,
and teaching techniques are taught in the Colville National Forest;
arctic training is conducted on Calispell Mountain near Cusick, WA;
desert training is conducted in an arid sand dune area near George, WA;
rough land evacuation is conducted near Tum-Tum, WA; tropics/rivers
survival is taught in the Olympic National Park, WA; and coastal
survival is conducted on Tillamook Bay off the Oregon coast.
US Air Force Special Ops
Finally a book on everything about PJ's and CCT from their extensive
training, the pipeline, to future mission profiles. Better, more
in-depth info than I have ever found on the net. But this is just half
of this book. If your looking for info about the planes, helos, jets and
their capabilities this is the book you're looking for
I have read every book on Air Force Special Ops, and by
far this is the most current and illustrative. While the photos may be
staged, considering the secret nature of Special Ops, real-time photos
may not even exist, let alone be de-classified: they are very
illustrative of many aspects of operations. There are so many books
about SEALS, Special Forces, Rangers, etc. and AF SpecOps is so
overlooked, it is about time they get some equal time. This book is the
best I have seen, to date.
 That
Others May Live
That Others May Live is the story of one of America's most elite
military units. The PJs--pararescue jumpers--are to the air force what
the Green Berets are to the army and the SEALs are to the navy, even
though they are less well known. There are only about 300 of them, and
their main function is to rescue downed pilots, often behind enemy
lines. They also perform civilian rescues. "There are no more capable
rescuers than the PJs," writes Jack Brehm, a 20-year PJ veteran who
penned this book with journalist Pete Nelson. "No one else knows how to
fall five miles from the sky to rescue somebody. No one else trains to
make rescues in such a wide variety of circumstances and conditions on a
mountaintop, in the middle of the Sahara, or 1,000 miles out from shore
in hurricane-tossed seas." Some readers will recall the PJs' minor role
in Sebastian Junger's harrowing bookThe Perfect Storm; Brehm actually
coordinated that PJ operation, and he tells his side of the story on
these pages.
Most of That Others May Live (the title is a PJ motto) is told in the
third person--an odd choice for a book that labels itself
"autobiography" on the jacket. But it works well as Brehm describes
everything from PJ training school (about 90 percent of enrollees quit)
to family life (divorce rates are very high, even though Brehm is
blessed with a supportive wife and five kids). The best parts of the
book focus on daring PJ missions and include vivid accounts of, for
instance, what free fall is like after jumping from a plane at 26,000
feet ("It's nothing like holding your arm out the window of a car moving
at 125 mph. It's more like lying on a pillow of air, so restful you
could almost fall asleep"). Brehm also reveals the startling low pay PJs
receive: after a few promotions and a dozen years experience, he writes,
they make "about what a high school graduate temping in an office can
earn if she's really good at alphabetizing." Yet the job has plenty of
other rewards for a certain type of person: "The stereotypical
pararescueman gets a testosterone high from being physically fit, and an
endorphin high from exercising, and then he gets an adrenaline high from
parachuting out of an airplane to a victim in need of medical
assistance, and then he gets a spiritual, godlike feeling of omnipotence
from saving somebody's life, and then he goes to a bar after the mission
and has a few shots of tequila to celebrate." Brehm assures readers that
every PJ "will deviate" from this description, but the whole of his book
reveals it to be a pretty good one-sentence sketch of PJ life.
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