The He-Dog Run

It’s pitch dark and loud and blowing sheets of spray as the helicopter plunges into the sea.

I’m strapped to the pilot’s seat, five-point harness cranked tight, hands and feet resting on dead controls. Water rushes in the cabin and swirls ever higher — feet, knees, waist, chest — and I pull a last breath, drop my chin, grab the shoulder straps and hold on. Actual submersion happens, as it always does, impossibly fast. I feel the mass of water drag my helmet clear off my head — it stops short, suspended, when the chinstrap catches my jaw.

After a few short seconds the helicopter is upside down. I know this because the violent churn of water has settled, leaving me submerged in a sinking aircraft — upside down, my head flooded, eyes squeezed shut, breath held, and the seconds ticking away.

There’s a deliberate stepwise process to escape precisely this situation, and I just spent two days learning it at the Survival Systems USA training facility in Groton, Connecticut.

Why? Well, I came across an article in Smithsonian Air and Space magazine a few weeks ago, and He-Dogs being He-Dogs, emailed the company to see what’s what. Turns out they have a full calendar and many different courses, so not to be shortchanged, I booked the very same (and “terrifying”) course that article’s author did.

This training goes by various names — HUET, ASET, and so on, chiefly because different military and industry groups have differing training requirements — but whatever you call it, this class is two days of underwater disorientation and escape training with a focus on inverted, submerged helicopters. Here’s a quick video.

The course uses a mean little seatbelted-chair-in-a-cage called the SWET (shallow water egress trainer), as well the formidable METS (modular egress training system) –a full-size mock-up helicopter cabin. The program I did also included dropping into the water from an elevated platform in full gear (to simulate bailing from a hover), surface survival training including life raft procedures and training for rescue using Coast Guard-type helicopter lifting baskets, as well as several hours of sober classroom instruction.

My classmates were seven Israeli combat helicopter pilots, four air-ambulance medics from Stonybrook, and a SCUBA expert sampling the course offerings before joining the staff of rescue divers the facility keeps on hand.

They say I’m the first patent lawyer to train here.

This class is tough and pushes limits — I mean, not many people fantasize of being pinned underwater upside down fumbling for a seatbelt buckle in the dark — but it’s a smooth operation and a team of experienced instructors breaks it all down into manageable steps. The key, above all, is staying calm. This helps immeasurably, and is probably well nigh impossible absent the actual experience this training provides.

Our two days involved a lot of pool time: About five runs in the SWET chair and eight in the METS, first on “breath hold” and then using emergency breathing devices (basically, tiny SCUBA bottles).

The METS “dunker” runs start out basic — surface ditching, doors already off — and get progressively hairier, culminating in a full-darkness submersion with no warning and with blocked exits — forcing us to make our way across the cabin to feel for another way out.

And, mirroring real helicopter behavior, pretty much every single escape is done inverted.

Some things I learned from my Survival Systems ASET/HUET/EBD training:

• Helicopters are top-heavy, and a majority of ditchings will invert straight away. A Blackhawk will sink at over ten feet per second. Think about that.
• The training feels real because it is. You can’t fake being stuck upside down underwater in a cabin. You really have to do it.
• This also means that stuff can happen. On one egress, I got tangled in my seatbelt — it somehow twisted and caught my leg. Being stuck in a belt underwater, training run or not, is what your brain will deem an “urgent situation.” The response: Stay calm, focus, work your way out, and be glad this happened when you had the air bottle.
• The basic evacuation process is as follows. Before takeoff, memorize the location and feeling of various exit handles, as well as reference points to find them without looking. (“Touch knee, move hand to the left, find handle that turns clockwise.”) When you go under, let your sinuses flood, that’s just going to happen. Keep your eyes shut and stay strapped in. When the violent motion stops, find and jettison your exit. Grab hold of the exit opening and don’t let go. Only then undo your belt. Put the other hand on the opening, and pull yourself out. Unbuckling your seatbelt with water still churning through the cabin is a sure way to get thrown around, end up totally disoriented, and die.
• When jumping from a hovering helicopter into the sea, look down once to clear the area, then look only at the horizon. One hand to your helmet, the other on that elbow, take a big step and cross your ankles right away. If you look down, you’ll do a flop.

• 

  When the Coast Guard lowers a basket to fish you out of the sea, always let it touch the water before you grab it, or you’ll get a huge electric shock. Also, the rotor downwash and noise and darkness and searchlights make it virtually impossible to see. It was much, much harder to get into this basket than I expected.

• If you don’t already know this from SCUBA class: Always, always exhale on ascent if you’ve breathed compressed air.
• The “carpet” multi-person surface survival position is surprisingly comfortable.
• Life rafts look much bigger and more imposing when you’re floating beside them in the water. Getting into them, nylon ladder or not, takes work.

I was pretty apprehensive about this class — I’m not the guy who likes being thrust upside down in the pool. But lead instructors Dan McInnis and Trey Ollice were knowledgeable and good teachers, and all the instructors, divers, and staff were confident, competent, and firm. And as one instructor explained on day two, the training hits a lot of different fears — even heights, what with dropping off an elevated platform. (“I’ve seen JSOC [special forces] cry here,” he said.) But it’s a solid, stepwise training, and it’s undeniably useful, empowering, and ultimately almost fun to do. And to stress oneself and overcome is better than to sit around watching Netflix. Right?