Fairchild AFB school prepares pilots for rigors of captivity
Evasion, resistance and escape tactics are taught as part of the 17-day survival course at the Air Force Survival School at Fairchild Air Force Base.
“It’s a laboratory that exposes students to different aspects of simulated captivity stresses,” Fairchild spokeswoman Lt. Tiffany Payette said Tuesday. “Specific tactics, techniques and procedures will not be disclosed.”
The school — the 336th Training Group — trains 3,500 air crew members a year, mostly from the Air Force. Navy and Army pilots, as well as special operations units, receive similar training.
The Department of Defense has said 14 Americans, mostly Army troops, have been captured or are missing in the invasion of Iraq.
Most soldiers do not receive extensive training in escape and resistance, Fort Lewis Army Base public affairs spokesman Dave Kuhns said.
Front line troops or support personnel are required to take annual training on the Code of Conduct, which sets out expectations for a soldier taken prisoner.
In part, it says, “I will make every effort to escape and help others escape. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies.”
Former Air Force Capts. Scott O’Grady and Dale Storr — both from Spokane — are two survival school graduates who used what they learned after being downed behind enemy lines.
When his F-16 fighter was shot down in Bosnia in 1995, O’Grady ate bugs and drank rain water while evading capture for six days before he was rescued.
Storr was the pilot of an A-10A “Warthog” that was shot down over Kuwait in the opening days of the Gulf War in 1991. He was held captive in Iraq for 33 days. He has returned here to tell survival school instructors what pilots can expect as POWs.
Details of the training are classified, but Storr told The Spokesman-Review of Spokane that his training gave him the physical and mental toughness to withstand torture.
“You learn a lot about yourself, how strong and how weak you are,” he said. “I would’ve been a real mess without it.”
During his month in captivity at a Baath Party security building in Baghdad, Storr underwent nearly daily beatings and threats on his life.
His captors broke his nose, perforated his left eardrum and dislocated his right shoulder. He still suffers some ill effects from the abuse at the hands of Iraqi interrogators, Storr said recently.
Storr left active duty and is a Boeing 737 first officer for United Airlines. He is a lieutenant colonel with the Washington Air Guard’s 141st Air Refueling Wing at Fairchild, where he flies KC-135 refueling tankers.
Survival school officials have said prisoners of war from World War II and Vietnam have come to the school to see its mock POW camp and to share their experiences.
During their 17-day course, survival school students are taught how to find food, water and shelter. They also learn land navigation, camouflage and evasion techniques, first aid and search and rescue.
The course includes outdoor exercises in the Colville National Forest, about 70 miles north of the base, where students learn to build temporary shelters, trap wild animals and gather vegetation for food, and evade potential captors.
Storr, whose Air Guard unit is awaiting possible activation, joined other U.S. and allied POWs and their families in a lawsuit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from Iraq for their treatment during the 1991 Gulf War. The case is pending.