Helicopter Dunker Training

Jim, see my last post, got me looking through my old Army photographs. Yes, that is me and that is FEAR on my face. As part of training during the safety officer course, we got to experience the dreaded helo dunker at Pensacola NAS. Before going to Pensacola we had heard rumors about people drowning during dunker training. To make matters worse, we did not get dunked until after we had completed all of the other water survival training. As I recall, successful completion of the other training was required before the dunker, and some folks did not make it that far.

So, after repeatedly swimming the length of the pool with all of our flight gear, I was now going to have to be strapped into an over sized 55 gallon drum, dropped into a deep pool and rolled (sometimes left, sometimes right) upside down under the water. After the device stopped, I was to release my seat belt and depart a certain way through a preassigned exit and swim to the surface.

By then, I was fatigued and not too confident (despite the fact that divers would be in the water with us). Oh yeah, I almost forgot, it wasn't just me in the barrel each time, it was me and five of my fellow pilots. Also, we did not just have to go in and get out of the dunker once, we had to do it four times. The first time we had to depart through the closest window, the next time we all had to depart through the main cabin door, next we had to depart through the closest window while wearing blackened goggles so we could not see, and last we had to depart through the main cabin exit while wearing blackened out goggles. The picture above was the last run where I had to go from the cockpit into the cabin and out of the cabin door while wearing blackened goggles. Fortunately the dunker was rolling to the right so I could get an extra breath of air (more than the guys in the right seats that time).

I feel a little better now after doing google searches for the helo dunker and finding that I was not the only one intimidated by it. I have seen it described as "insane", "causing all spatial orientation to be gone", "terrifying", "evil contraption", "the worst and scariest training sessions", "tough", "dreaded training device", and more. Fortunately, I successfully completed the program and discovered a new found respect for flying over water.