We arrived in Pensacola with little idea of where we were going to stay. Pensacola, however, was used to having people looking for short duration housing. Before too long we came across a little one bedroom cottage which we could afford. As a bonus there was a pecan tree in the yard. It was not much of a place, but it was a hose on its own lot and made us feel like we had our own house.

One of the strange things I remember about renting this house was my reaction when asked for my father’s name and address. I was outraged to think that I could not rent a house on my own, I had a job, I had a wife, I could take care of myself. When the landlord explained that she needed the name only as a precaution I calmed down My reaction had been way out of line.

We learned a lot about living in Florida in that house. Neither Pat nor I had ever lived in the south and we had no understanding of the heat and humidity we were going to experience. The house had a small window mounted air-conditioner and a large assortment of bugs and lizards.

Fortunately, we would be gone before the heat of summer. Alas it would not save us from the insects. The Palmetto Bugs grow to incredible sizes. Thankfully, they have not figured out how to work in unison or they might have carried our bed out of the house. It is truly upsetting to find one of these monsters in the toilet, not an unusual occurrence, unfortunately.

Finally I reported to begin my flight training. Pre-flight Training would take place at what was referred to as Main-side Pensacola, the main base at what is Naval Air Station (N.A.S.) Pensacola. Additional training would take place at various outlying airfields in the greater Pensacola area.

Pre-flight training was also useful in weeding out those who did not really have a strong desire to fly. During Pre-flight we would only see aircraft off in the distance.

A large portion of the curriculum is devoted to getting us into good physical shape. It is amazing how physically taxing it is to fly a military aircraft. There is the mental challenge in every flight, but a surprisingly large physical toll is extracted in even a routine mission. At least we were all officers now and we were not subjected to the iron-fisted rule of a Drill Instructor (DI) as we were in prior experiences. Now we were taught how to do things and supervised in accomplishing them. We could, however, go home at night.

We had such challenges as the obstacle course, shuttle running, rope climbing, cross-country running, and, of course, push-ups. We were presented with numeric standards and it was up to us to meet those standards. Time was provided in the schedule to work on our weaknesses and we were periodically tested to see how we compared to the standards. I had to work hard to make the 7 minute cross-country mile and the weight limit, but my biggest personal challenge was the eight foot flat wall.

We got to experience the classic Dilbert Dunker. This is the very unnerving crash simulator in which the student is strapped into a simulated cockpit with a standard five-point harness. The relatively open cockpit is then rolled forward on rails into a swimming pool where it is rapidly inverted. Every one knows exactly what the motion is, there is no variation. Despite this foreknowledge, and my experience in the water over the years, it is a very disorientating experience. There is always a safety swimmer to insure that panic does not take too great a toll. It did, however, serve to weed out a few who were not quite up to the task.

A more pleasant experience was the ejection seat trainer. I had experienced this thrill ride once before, as a Middy, but who could pass up a free trip on an E-ticket ride. (if the reference is too obscure an E-ticket was required to ride the very best and most exciting ride in the early days of Disney parks any you got fewer of each level ticket from A to E to the dollar) For this experience you are strapped into a real ejection seat that is attached to metal rails which rise behind it. In place of the normal rocket charge is a reusable device that hurls the seat and the ‘pilot’ skyward in a movement that closely simulates the real thing. This is an experience not to be missed.

Another experience is the water drag. In this one you climb a tower to a platform that is about ten feet above the waters of Pensacola Bay. You are strapped into a parachute harness that is in turn attached to a boat idling well clear of the tower. The idea of this exercise is to simulate parachuting into the water while a strong wind catches your parachute. Your mission is to release the parachute from the harness as you are being dragged through the water. As you jump off the tower, the boat starts moving and you find yourself being pulled face first into the water. The first thing to do is get your mouth closed before you fill with water, then you roll to your back and skim along the water like a flat rock. Then it is a matter of getting your arms up over your head, locating the releases and managing to release them at the same time. If you only get one to release you are in trouble. There is a likelihood that your parachute will deflate once you release one side. On the basis that it may not, the boat continues dragging those who release only one side. This usually results in another face full of water and a tremendous effort to stabilize yourself enough to release the final connection.

Another challenge was to take place in a swimming pool. This was to prepare us for long duration survival in the water. We were shown that we could make a functional flotation device out of our trousers. Then it was pointed out that we would, most likely, be in flight suits that are one piece and would probably be more useful as protection for the skin. We were taught how to relax in a mode where you go into a limp status, let your head go below the water, and just pull your arms down and back to get your face out of the water for a breath of air. This is fine in calm waters, however, in any kind of wave action you must tread water. Much time was spent in practicing the fine art of treading water while expending minimal effort over extremely long periods of time.

We were familiarized with the way the eye works in darkness and how to interpret what we were seeing in the dark. There is a very clear apparent motion of non-moving lights in darkness that is interesting to experience. We examined the way our eyes adapt to the dark and how important that adaptation can be.

We went for a ‘flight’ in a hypobaric chamber. This is a large airtight room that is connected to equipment that can remove the air from it. This simulates being at various altitudes under very controllable conditions. A whole group of people could be placed in this chamber along with a couple of instructors who were also safety people with access to oxygen at all times. The whole idea of this exercise was to experience hypoxia (a reduction of the oxygen getting to body tissues). This is a two-part experience in order to fully understand what is going on you must become hypoxic as well as observes someone who is in a state of hypoxia. It is really hilarious to see an intelligent college graduate trying to stumble through the alphabet, counting to ten, trying to play pattie-cake, or even trying to write his name while oxygen deprived. On the other side of the coin is the realization that you experienced the same lack of mental and physical abilities.

The big problem is that you don’t realize that you are having problems. When they take your oxygen mask away you don’t notice anything different. Your world goes on and you just get sleepy. I had a real life experience with hypoxia while I was at Glenview. One of the aircraft we had there was a Korean War vintage T-33, an airforce jet trainer. After maintenance on an aircraft a test pilot takes the plane up for a check out and I was invited to go along. In the Navy pilots fly with 100% oxygen flowing in their mask from take off to landing. Evidently in the Airforce they conserve oxygen by not starting the oxygen flow until they are at altitude. Some one neglected to mention this detail to me and I did not check to see if I was getting oxygen when we got to altitude. Fortunately, my pilot, being a test pilot was very aware of every little detail going on in the plane. He noticed, through the intercom, that my breathing had slowed beyond reason. I had noticed nothing wrong. In this aircraft there is an indicator which blinks black and white with your breathing. The pilot directed my attention to this indicator and told me to see how slowly it was blinking. This meant nothing to me at this point. My mind had been deprived of oxygen long enough that it was amazing that he got me to do anything. Eventually he got me to throw the switch to insure that I was getting oxygen flow. As I watched the blinker started going faster and faster until my breathing had returned to normal and I began to understand what had transpired.

Another significant section of the curriculum was devoted to Survival, Escape and Evasion. This portion of Pre-flight was a combination of classroom and field lessons with a final exam taking three days in the wilderness of Egland Air Force Base in the panhandle of Florida. In the classroom we learned about edible plants, poisonous ones which parts were edible and which weren’t. More importantly, we learned how to test plants for edibility. This involves essentially an entire day, but when you are trying to survive and can’t find something you know is edible, what is a day.

During one lecture someone noticed something rubbing his leg, he looked down and saw a huge snake. He jumped from the back of the room to the front in one leap. It turns out it was the instructors’ pet python and he was released in the back of the room just to get such a reaction. The point was not to jump to conclusions when confronted by a snake. I’m not sure that that lesson was best learned quite that way. That we should be alert to the presence of snakes and not assume that all snakes are a threat. I think that the environment would be an important element in that alertness.

We also studied the history of POWs and the guidance given to all military people regarding their responsibilities to themselves, their fellow prisoners and our country. We were also given guidelines for evading enemy forces. We spent time one how to provide shelter for ourselves in various environments and on first aid that we could provide to ourselves. We were taught different methods to start fires and got some practice in doing so. In most cases it is an awful lot of work. In a survival situation you would need to use fire on a regular basis, in an evasion mode use of fire would be severely limited and the type of fire used would be structured differently.

Our ‘final’ exam was to survive in the wild area of while evading detection by our instructors and arriving at a map coordinate for a supposed helicopter pickup at a specified time. We were to spend the first day as a group practicing our skills at shelter building, fire building and finding food. Then we would break into groups of two to proceed by our own routes to the pickup point. We were subject to capture the entire time and would have to show up at the pickup point in time for the pickup. We each were in flight suits, gray in color, and had a small piece of flint mounted on a small piece of wood with a piece of a jigsaw blade stored inside it ( I still have it today) and our survival knife. We never fly without these two items.

The first day and night was rather enjoyable on the whole. We did find the basic plant life of Florida to be quite unfriendly. Everything from sawgrass to prickly pear to palmetto have every type of defense from numerous teeth to thorns to spear like leaf ends. We were told to be careful of Easter Diamond Back rattle snakes, Pigmy rattlers, Water Moccasins, and Coral snakes. – they were all protected on the base and we were not to harm them. I just wish they had the same rules.

One of the guys was chasing something moving fast and dove at it as it scurried under a Palmetto plant. He came up screaming that a snake had bitten him. He definitely had a puncture wound a single wound from the plant. We teased him endlessly about being attacked by the one fanged snake. We managed to put together a couple of edible meals from the local plants and a meager meat source we came across. In an old rotten tree one of they guys noticed a squirrel. When he hit it on the head with the handle of his knife it fell to the ground and was almost immediately replaced by another. He repeated this until there were four squirrels at his feet. Any remaining squirrels must have figured out what was going on because no more followed.

It amazed us at how little edible meat is on a squirrel. They are very small animals and once you get them skinned and gutted there is very little remaining. I think squirrel or other small mammals would be very low on my priorities if I were in a survival situation. My time would be better spent in finding what they were eating.

The next two days were a bit more challenging. We were divided into about a dozen teams of two. We were given a 20 minute start to disperse before the instructors would start looking for us. We knew where we were going and when we had to be there. We just had to keep from being found along the way. There was no problem with the distance in the time that could easily be accomplished. The question was, did we want to show up at the pickup point early and chance the instructors finding us in the area? My partner and I decided to arrive at the designated spot no move than an hour before the designated time. We were told that the final 30 minutes was free time – we would not be captured in that last half-hour, however, if we arrived late we would fail the exercise.

We decided to circle well to the north, then approach the spot so that we could be within sight of it with the hour to spare. I really don’t know how hard the instructors were looking for us. Each time we knew they were in our area we could hear them or their vehicles well before they got near us. This gave us plenty of time to find a decent hiding place and cover our tracks. We were especially careful when crossing dirt roads to be sure that we didn’t leave clear tracks in the dirt. Another place we were especially careful was where we came out of streams. We tried very hard to come out either at rocky places or places where the bank was well coated with leaves. The only time we almost got caught was one time when we were coming out of a stream and we heard voices very close by. We just had time to lay flat on the ground and hope. We could see two of the instructors walking by about 20 feet away. They didn’t see us and soon disappeared. It turned out they were walking on one of the many dirt roads in the area.

The two of us managed to make it through the two days successfully. We managed to avoid detection. I’m not sure how long we would last on the Northern Florida Wild Vegetarian Diet, but for two days it wasn’t too bad. Our calculations on how long it would take to travel the final half mile to the pickup point were a little off, we arrived 15 minutes before pickup instead of an hour ahead, but at least we were ahead.

We had succeeded in our mission. Several of the other teams had been picked up by instructors, they were detained for short periods of time, made to do push-ups and just given a hard time. Then they were released and told that they had 15 minutes to disappear. One team was five minutes late in arriving at the designated point. If this had been a real life situation that could have been a real problem, in this case they were only embarrassed.

We learned a lot about ourselves and about plants and animals both good and bad. Pre-Flight was now over for most of the class. Unfortunately, I had never been able to get over that damned wall on the obstacle course. Despite passing everything else they had thrown at us this one thing was to keep me from going on to Primary Flight School.

I spent many hours building up my upper body, which was not a bad thing, but it turned out to be a psychological problem. Once I managed to get over it I never failed again. I had no other problems, so once I had mastered the WALL I called upon an instructor to time me on the course and I ran it with a very good time and was cleared to move on to Primary.