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SERE parachutists take over international competition

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Connie L. Bias
  • 92nd Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
FAIRCHILD AIR FORCE BASE, Wash. --  Two Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape parachute teams proved themselves be among the best in the world at Leapfest 2007, an annual international parachute competition held Aug. 11 in Rhode Island. The 66th Training Squadron from the Naval Air Station at Pensacola, Fla., took first place in the competition, and the 22nd Training Squadron here placed fourth, both teams representing the 336th Training Group here. The 66th TRS is the first Air Force team to win first-place honors at Leapfest in its 25-year history.

"This is proof positive that I have the best guys in the world, that they're the best at what they do," said Maj. Scott Shepard, 66th Training Squadron Detachment 2 commander, who added that his team will "look to defend the championship next year." That top-place team consisted of Tech. Sgt. Troy Daland and Staff Sgts. Brandon Smith, Brandon Klein, Jesse Stoda and David Watters.

Team members from both the 66th and the 22nd say that placing at the top was no easy task; competition is "pretty stiff," said Sergeant Daland. "Between us and the next winning team there was a 10-second difference, so it was really tight," he said.

Jump teams consist of four parachutists, with an elective alternate on hand if a primary jumper gets hurt. During the Leapfest competition, the four parachutists jump out of a CH-47 Chinook ramp at 1,500 feet, at one-second intervals. Once the parachutes open, the jumpers use wind and parachute speed to maneuver themselves toward a large X placed on a 218-acre drop zone, landing as close as possible to the mark. Each team jumps three times during the competition.

"Each arm of the X is about five meters long, and in the center there's a disc about six to eight inches," explained Staff Sgt. Eric Zwoll, SERE instructor from the 22nd here, who competed with team members Staff Sgts. Kurtis Douge and Garry Mclean, and Senior Airman Ryan Magee. "A person on the ground is keeping an eye on each jumper, and the time from the moment the jumper hits the ground until the moment they reach that disc with their parachute is their final time."

The winning time, then, is a combination of each team member's time - the lowest score wins. The 66th's winning team time was 73 seconds, and the 22nd was close behind them with 111 seconds. Senior Airman Magee says their ability to jump on target so well is easily explained ... practice.

"It just comes with the experience of hitting the ground," said the Airman, who was the youngest and newest member of the team with 23 jumps under his belt before the competition. "It's a combination of being able to jump a lot, and being in the right environment."

That "right environment" is the SERE school, where the 60 active parachutists on staff average a joint 1,200 jumps per year, far more than the military's proficiency requirement of one jump per quarter. For the jumpers here, that averages 20 jumps per year, and some parachute even more often than that, according to Sergeant Douge.

"The SERE field is one of the four Air Force designated jump career fields," explained the parachutist, who went to Leapfest as the most experienced on the 22nd team, with 170 jumps behind him. "The main reason we parachute regularly, and this is very important, is to teach aircrew members how to egress, either eject or bail out of a crippled aircraft. If we're teaching it, we shouldn't just know the information from a book; we need to jump out of the airplanes ourselves."

That personal experience gives SERE students a necessary confidence in the instructors, said Sergeant Douge. The ability to jump on target also enables instructors to appropriately demonstrate equipment and procedures.

"Our main focus is demonstrations, and you can't very well demonstrate if you land a mile away from the students who are trying to see you," said Sergeant Douge. "That accuracy practice did give us an advantage in the competition."

Well, perhaps "well-earned lead" would be a better term - these parachutists train hard to be at the top of their game. And now they've come out on top in a competition that included not only U.S. military forces, but also military members from ten other countries, including Bolivia, Germany, Peru, Uruguay and El Salvador. As the major said so perfectly, "proof positive" that they are, in fact, the best in the world.