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Survival Training for When a Pilot’s World Turns Upside Down
NAVAL AIR STATION WHIDBEY ISLAND, Wash. — The pilot sat strapped to a chair, held in place as if he were in the backseat of a helicopter. Beside him, on a mock wall, was a window. The window was closed. The pilot wore opaque goggles. He could not see the window or anything else. The chair was attached to a rotating stand in the chest-deep water of a swimming pool. A petty officer spun a large wheel, flipping the chair backward with a gentle whoosh. The pilot was now underwater, upside down.… (www.nytimes.com) المزيد...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
I'll ride the centrifuge all day long over aviation water survival training.
Factoid: I was told when I went through it that the Navy added the helo dunker to the Dilbert Dunker ejection training because there had been instances where the SAR helo had gone down on the way back to the ship. That's when they realized that everyone aboard had been trained on helo egress procedures-- except the poor schmuck who'd just been rescued.
What James Brown said. Got to do that around 1961 at Quonset Point NAS going through air crew training.
I feel like Grampa Pettibone...I was a cadet in 1943.
I doubt much had changed by 1961. Probably the same type rig you rode. I was even on the last of the straight decks.
"Dilbert Dunkers" used to be at most Naval Air Stations where cadets trained. The dunkers were a rudamentary cockpit on a slide that when it hit the water, flipped upside own. Of course, we did not have an oxygen mask. Strapped to the seat with flight gear on encouraged the cadet to make a rapid disconnect. Naval aviators of all vintage live with this possibility of a water landing. We hate this remote possibility, but we don't fear it any more than when we wear a parachute