Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

by Tom Clancy

  BAS students hate the PT runs for good reason. Even in the pre-dawn hours, that half-hour run soaks the trainees with sweat. Their muscles begin to ache and bind up. The really bad news is that if you don’t fold up one day, you may do so the next day. The runs are an extremely high-impact form of exercise that is very tough on joints and muscles. The pounding is progressive, and it either tends to build a person’s body up, or wreck it. As you saw in the table earlier, failed PT runs account for almost 20 percent of the dropouts and are a secondary cause of many other injuries. Running in the high heat and humidity of Fort Benning is a cause of frequent heat injuries, including rapid dehydration and possible heat stroke. In particular, if students suffer a jump injury in another phase of training, like a sprained ankle or foot, there is no way that they will be able to hide it on the following day’s PT run. If the students submit themselves to the infirmary, and they receive a profile (a doctor’s order limiting physical activity), depending on the severity of the injury, they may be dropped from the course or recycled (sent to another training company).

  While this may sound rather unfair, the PT runs serve a variety of purposes. First, the runs verify that the students are in proper physical shape for the challenges that they may face in the airborne. The runs also provide the Black Hats with a gauge for measuring the physical toughness of the future paratroopers. The airborne lifestyle is rough on a person’s body, and it is best to find out one’s durability early. Since an airborne recruit is only allowed to miss one run (unless they present themselves as injured to the medical department), those who are brittle or weak tend to fall out early. The Black Hats like to say that if you can survive BAC and your first few years of airborne duty without a major injury, you will probably stay that way for your whole career.

  Right after each morning’s run, the recruits are marched over to the mess hall, where they are given their choice of breakfast, and a few minutes to catch their breath. As might be expected of an Army post in the heart of the old Confederacy, the menu contains such favorites as grits (yuk!), biscuits and gravy, and other “classic” Army fare such as “SOS.”14 There also is lighter fare, acknowledgment that times and dietary preferences are changing. Whatever their choice, the BAC students wolf down their food, eating hearty and drinking all the coffee they can hold. They will need the energy and fluids, because they are headed back outside, into the heat and humidity, where most of Jump School takes place.

  After breakfast each day, the BAC class is marched over to the parade ground for training. On the first Monday, though, the class is marched over to the parade area mentioned previously, for their first introduction to the paratrooper world. Seated in bleachers, they are then given a combination pep talk and primer on what will happen to them in the coming three weeks. Called the “Airborne 5,000,” the presentation shows the BAC students all of the skills that they will be required to learn and demonstrate.

  In addition, they are given a good dose of what the Black Hats call “HOOAH” talk.15 This is delivered by both the commanding officer (Lieutenant Colonel Sifers) and command sergeant major (Sergeant Major Cox) of the 1/507th, and is both inspiring and daunting. Using the good cop-bad cop method of communication, they tag-team the new BAC class with the good news (most of them will be airborne troopers soon) and the bad news (the rest won’t) about the coming three weeks. In particular, the sergeant major drills home the point that there are many ways to flunk out of BAC, most of them just plain stupid. Failing to follow orders, ignoring a safety regulation, not completing a run, or just getting drunk on a day off are all reasons for being expelled from BAS. In particular, he makes the point that just making all the runs and completing five jumps does not make a student a paratrooper. Only his say-so and that of the Black Hats give Jump School candidates their airborne certification.

  The whole presentation is like something out of the opening of the movie Patton, and is designed to have the same effect. There is a positive air of excitement and esprit in the air, even in the way students are expected to respond to the Black Hats. Whenever addressed by a BAC cadre member, the appropriate affirmative answer is “Airborne, Sir!”

  Sergeant Major William Cox, the Senior Non-Commissioned Officer of the 1/507th. He supervises the training of student paratroops for the battalion.

  JOHN D. GRESHAM

  Student paratroops at Fort Benning, Georgia, yell a hearty, “Hu Ahhh!” during the Airborne 5,000 Demonstration Orientation.

  JOHN D. GRESHAM

  Following another healthy round of shouted “HOOAHs,” the class is shown a series of demonstrations of various airborne techniques that they will have to master. Skills like parachute landing falls and exit tucks are shown to the trainees to give them some idea of what is to come. They are also shown some of the training apparatuses that they will use during the following few weeks. These include everything from swing harnesses and stands to teach aircraft exits and landings, to the 34-foot/10.4-meter and 250-foot/76.2-meter drop towers. It is an exciting presentation, and you can feel the growing enthusiasm in the young men and women as they sit there, watching intently. You also see them sweat, which is going to be one of their primary occupations in the days to come. That’s not surprising since most of the BAS classrooms are merely open-air sheds, with little more than a wooden roof to keep the sun and rain off their heads. During all of my tour of the BAS facilities, I saw no air-conditioned classrooms. This is a truly brutal way to learn, but what you have to endure if you aspire to the airborne.

  Following the Airborne 5,000, the BAS students and their Black Hats get right down to business. The first class has the student learning to do mock exits from a simulated aircraft fuselage. Other drills and classes follow, and don’t let up until graduation, three weeks hence. The BAS course generally follows the curriculum shown in the table below for the rest of the first week of BAS:

  Basic Airborne Course Training Schedule—Week 1

  Week 1 has the BAC students becoming familiar with their new equipment and with basic exit/landing procedures. Their training focus, other than the grueling program of PFTs, are the various PLFs, or Parachute Landing Falls. These are essentially tumbling exercises designed to allow a loaded paratrooper to safely land in a variety of different conditions and terrains. For example, the proper PLF for landing on soft dirt or grass is to land with your legs bent, and to roll into the direction that the parachute is drifting. The PLFs are necessary to a safe and successful landing. Attempting to land straight and rigid will only result in broken bones and useless casualties, burdening an airborne task force in their LZ.

  Along with the PLF training, the BAC students spend a lot of time on the 34-foot/10.4-meter training towers. These are three-story towers much like the ones used by U.S. Park Service Rangers to watch for forest fires. The 34-foot/10.4-meter towers are used to familiarize the students with some of the forces and feelings that they will experience when they start jumping out of actual aircraft.

  All kinds of jump techniques are practiced from these towers. These include everything from single-person exits to getting a full stick of troopers (up to eight) out as quickly as possible. The students’ performance in these exit drills are scored, and become a part of the qualifications that they must pass if they are to complete BAC.

  My researcher, John Gresham, volunteered to give the 34-foot/10.4-meter tower a try, and Black Hats started by fitting him with a six-point harness and set of risers. The harness is a tight fit, especially around the crotch area. This tight fit is essential to avoid a debilitating personal injury to the male students, if you get my meaning! Once John was fitted, he waddled up several flights of stairs to the top of the tower. There, the Black Hats attached the risers to a special wire, which runs from an exit door on the tower to the base of a large steel pole approximately 100 feet/30.5 meters away. The Black Hats now told him to step off, not to jump from, the edge of the platform, while focusing on a landmark in the distance.

  A student paratrooper during
training jumps from one of the thirty-four-foot towers. The student troops use this and many other training devices during jump school.

  JOHN D. GRESHAM

  Looking a little nervous, John approached the door exit, and stepped off into space. As we all watched, he dropped about 10 feet/3 meters; then the risers snapped onto the guy wire, and John was off on a rapid ride down the wire to the base of the steel pole. He was bouncing like a minnow on a fish line, but rapidly stabilized and reached up to grab the risers, as he had been instructed by the Black Hats. My immediate relief at his not having fallen over three stories to the ground was rapidly overtaken by the realization that he was headed straight toward the steel pole! Before I could voice my concern, his risers hit a stop in the wire, swinging him high in the air, but stopping him before impacting the pole. As he swung back down, two Black Hats were at the ready to grab him and get him down.

  A few minutes later, I joined him at the base of the tower to hear his impressions of the ride. He confirmed that things had happened so fast that he was almost to the pole before he knew what was going on. He also confessed that the harness, while tight and somewhat confining, was highly effective in spreading the loads of the risers evenly over his body. This is just one of the many experiences that BAC students have in their first five days at Fort Benning.

  The end of the first week comes none too soon for the BAC students, most of whom spend the coming weekend sleeping and healing from any minor injuries that they might have acquired during the week. By this time, they have probably made a few major realizations about Jump School. One is that BAC has very little do with combat. Those skills will come with their assignment to an airborne unit later. Right now, toughness, endurance, and the ability to work with equipment that will kill them if used improperly are the keys to finishing BAC with the coveted paratrooper’s badge.

  For some students, though, the weekend can bring the packing of bags and the beginning of a long drive up the road to Atlanta, and back to wherever they started from. These are the BAC trainees that have failed to make the cut somehow, and have been forced to drop the course. Most dropouts occur in the first week of BAC, and those who do drop out are bitterly disappointed. For those who have survived the first week, though, Week 2 brings a whole new series of experiences.

  Monday of the second week brings a new start, and new challenges. By now, the PT runs are 3.5 miles/5.6 kilometers long (by the end of the week, they will be an even 4 miles/6.4 kilometers), and the tower jumps are almost eight times higher! The students also spend a lot of the week in swing harnesses and other devices to teach them about the dynamics of descending to the ground under a parachute canopy.

  Along with the tower training and endless PT runs, there also are some indoor academics during Week 2. These are geared toward getting the students ready to handle an actual parachute rig. Things are rapidly getting serious now, because the following Monday will bring with it the first real jumps from aircraft. It is something to think about as they enjoy their second weekend at Fort Benning. Week 2 is a busy time, and the following table shows its curriculum:

  Basic Airborne Course Training Schedule—Week 2

  Along with more work on the 34-foot/10.4-meter towers, the students get to do a drop from the big 250-foot/76.2-meter towers, to teach them about the feelings of falling free and then descending under a nylon canopy. These towers have been used for over five decades to teach the skills and sensations of a parachute opening and then descending to the ground. Getting the students comfortable with these things is essential, because the following Monday will see them putting on a live parachute rig and jumping from an aircraft for the first time.

  For the BAS students, a 250-foot/76.2-meter tower drop begins by being strapped into a harness/riser ensemble, which hangs from a fully deployed parachute. This parachute is held above the student by an umbrella-shaped mesh fitting, which hangs from one of four metal suspension arms at the top of the tower. When the student is firmly strapped in, and the Black Hats are satisfied that all is ready, a signal is given to the tower operator, and the whole assembly—student, harness, and parachute—is hoisted up some 250 feet/76.2 meters. When the assembly reaches the top of the tower, one last safety check is made. This done, the operator releases the assembly, and down the student goes. Since the parachute is already deployed in the containment cage, the student descends at a comfortable sink rate to the ground in almost total safety. About the only thing that the student has to do right is a proper PLF on the plowed-up area around each tower!

  The third Monday of BAC is a watershed for the students: their first jumps with real parachutes from aircraft. By this time, though, whatever terror there might have been for the students is probably gone. Daily 4-mile/6.4-kilometer PT runs and the training of the previous two weeks have begun to make them feel untouchable, and their bodies are becoming like rocks. It is amazing what just fourteen days of heavy physical activity can do to a person. When they arrived at Fort Benning, they were just soldiers. Now they are within just days of achieving an almost mythical status within the Army: airborne. The curriculum for this third and final week of Jump School looks like this:

  Basic Airborne Course Training Schedule—Week 3

  Student jumpers during a training jump from one of Fort Benning’s 250-foot training towers. These towers originally were used as rides during the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair.

  JOHN D. GRESHAM

  As you can see, the entire schedule for the third week of BAC is designed to provide at least five opportunities for each student to jump from actual aircraft. The jumps must include drops from both C-130 Hercules and C-141B Starlifter transport aircraft. The jumps must also include a mix of day and night jumps, with single and mass jump scenarios mixed in. All BAC jumps are done with the basic T-10 parachute system at a nearby DZ just over the Alabama border.16 Known as Fryar DZ, it is a fairly large DZ (over a mile/almost two kilometers long) that is both wide and soft (the ground, that is!). It also is less than a five-minute flight from the airfield at Fort Benning, minimizing the turnaround time between training missions.

  The third Monday, Week 3 of BAS, begins with the now-standard 4-mile /6.4-kilometer PT run, followed by an indoor academic period to prepare them for their first jump. This includes a particularly terrifying safety film on how to deal with parachute malfunctions. While unusual these days, such emergencies do take place. With the finish of the safety film, the students are bused over to the equipment shed for the issue of their parachutes and other equipment.

  These are supplied by Company E of the 1/507th, which provides packing and maintenance services for the Jump School. These parachutes are lovingly maintained in a shed near the airfield by an expert staff of parachute packers. Inside the shed are a series of long tables, where enlisted technicians lay out the T-10s, fix any problems, and hand-pack every one. This matter of hand-packing is important, since a fabric device as complex as the T-10 simply cannot be assembled and packed by a machine. Only human hands and eyes have the sensitivity to feel inconsistencies in the canopy folds, or note wear on shroud lines. Parachute packing is not so much a skill as an art form, and the personnel of Company E know that.

  Packing a T-10 main canopy starts with the rigger taking a previously jumped parachute from a recovery bag, and spreading it along one of the long packing tables. Once the chute is spread and inspected for wear or tears, the rigger makes sure that there are no tangles in the shroud lines, and begins to fold it. Folding the T-10 main canopy takes only a few minutes, with the rigger basically doing the exact reverse of what the slipstream does when the parachute deploys. The packing involves a lot of folding, kneading, and tying off cords to get the parachute down to a tiny fraction of its inflated size. One of the oddest things about parachute packing is the practice of securing various flaps and parts with what looks like shoestrings and rubber bands. These are frangible ties, which are used to hold parts of the T-10 in place until they are subjected to specific loads upon release
of the static line. Once the static line yanks the T-10 canopy free, the cords and bands break, releasing various parts of the canopy system, allowing it to inflate safely. This assumes, of course, that the riggers have done their job properly. It only takes a skilled rigger a few minutes to fold a T-10 and secure it to its backpack bag. Once the packing job is completed, the rigger signs the parachute log, certifying that it is safe to use and ready to be issued. This is done regularly because a T-10, properly packed and maintained, is good for up to one hundred jumps.

  We were invited to watch a group of Week 3 BAS student go through their first jumps, and were excited at the opportunity. Around noon, Monica Manganaro and Major Rob Street drove us down to the flight line to follow the students through what would probably be one of the most memorable experiences of their lives. When we arrived, the BAS students were already getting ready for their jumps. Dressed in standard battle dress uniforms (BDUs), Kevlar “Fritz” helmets (also called “K-Pots”), and jump boots, they would jump today without any loads. Jumps later in the week would have them carrying simulated loads, similar to what they would carry on operational drops. Once the trainees were in their harness/parachute rigs, they were bused to a dilapidated old shed on the edge of the airfield to wait their turn to walk onto an aircraft for their first jumps. The shed, which dates back to World War II, has no air-conditioning, and was blazing hot and deathly humid. We watched the first group of students waiting to walk out to their assigned aircraft, looking a little nervous. Only large fans did anything to keep the air moving, and the students sat on long benches, sweating and checking each other’s gear as they waited.