DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- At 4 a.m., Airmen gathered at the SERE building at Dover Air Force Base, grabbing shoes designed for wet environments, loading backpacks and equipment into vehicles, and beginning the drive to Station Indian River Inlet, Delaware, while it was still dark outside.
For Airman 1st Class Chanin V. Perkins, a women’s health technician assigned to the 436th Healthcare Operations Squadron, the day began with a clear responsibility.
“My role as a medic was to be available if anybody was injured,” said Perkins. “Going into the exercise, I knew that I was mostly going to be dealing with dehydration and motion sickness, which is what ended up happening.”
By the time the group arrived at the Coast Guard station, the sun had risen over the water. Participants met with Coast Guardsmen, discussed the day’s training and prepared to board a 47-foot Motor Lifeboat.
The boat traveled beneath the Indian River Inlet Bridge and continued toward the Atlantic Ocean, carrying the group approximately eight miles offshore.
The Coast Guard boat stopped in the open water, allowing the participants to inflate the yellow life raft and climb aboard one at a time. Once everyone was settled, they pushed away from the Motor Lifeboat and began the exercise.
Participants established radios on multiple channels and reviewed survival equipment, including flares, signal mirrors, ropes, wind-monitoring equipment and other tools used to help isolated personnel communicate their location.
“Watching the raft participants and rescue teams, I noticed that communication is the absolute only way that anything was accomplished,” said Perkins. “The raft team had to give direct coordinates and wind speeds for the C-130 to try and drop the supplies.”
Tech. Sgt. Michael Schaffer, 436th Operations Support Squadron SERE operations section chief, participated in and helped plan and coordinate the exercise.
“Exercise Castaway is the largest PR (personnel rescue) exercise out of Dover Air Force Base for AMC,” said Schaffer. “Our job is to plan PR events and execute as if it were a real-world event, while also maintaining currency for specialists and giving people exposure to the PR world that wouldn’t otherwise see it.”
The first aircraft appeared as a small dot on the horizon.
A 436th Airlift Wing C-5M slowly made its way toward the raft before beginning a wide orbit overhead. From the raft, participants watched the aircraft circle against the bright sky while communicating with the aircrew.
Capt. Brian Ritchey, 436th OSS wing tactics commander, served as the C-5 aircraft commander and on-scene commander for the exercise.
“Exercise Castaway is a SERE exercise,” said Ritchey. “Basically it is like an expanded water survival to practice search and rescue best practices. So for us, as the C-5, we operated as kind of a long-station on-scene commander, for us to talk to the raft and make sure that they’re okay. Basically we would stay on station until someone who could actually help them get to them.”
Shortly after the C-5 arrived, a C-130 from the 166th Airlift Wing appeared lower on the horizon. Through the radio, the raft received information that the aircraft would make three practice care package drops.
Participants took turns striking flares to signal the raft’s location and help the C-130 aircrew determine where to release the supplies. Each backpack struck the water with a heavy splash before floating away from the raft. Sea-dye bags opened in the water, spreading bright green color across the surface and creating another visible marker for rescuers and the lifeboat crew.
“I thought that part was interesting to watch; how wind speeds higher in the sky affect the distance from the raft that the gear was dropped,” said Perkins.
Ritchey said the C-130’s role represented a possible response when an aircraft locates isolated personnel, but a helicopter cannot immediately reach them.
“If they found a raft and they couldn’t get to them immediately with a helicopter, then they would drop supplies that can either aid or help out the isolated personnel on the raft,” said Ritchey. “So that’s exactly what they did; they did practice drops over top of the raft. Not only does it help the lifeboat crew kind of see what the C-130s would be able to do, but it also helped train that aircrew on how to do that over water,” he added.
After the final C-130 pass, the aircraft departed and the ocean became quiet once again…until the sound of helicopter blades approached from the distance.
A Coast Guard MH-65 Dolphin, from the Atlantic City Coast Guard station, arrived over the raft, its rotors churning the air and water. Heavy gusts sprayed the participants and pushed waves across the surface. The raft rocked beneath them as the helicopter maintained a safe hover nearby.
A Coast Guard rescue swimmer slid from the helicopter, entered the water and swam toward the raft.
“The rescue diver just amazed me when he got into the raft with ease by himself,” said Perkins. “Because when I attempted to get into the raft, it took two of the instructors to yank me back into the boat.”
After speaking with the participants and explaining the hoist procedures, the swimmer began helping simulated survivors prepare for recovery.
“That diver swam back and forth from the boat to the helicopter with a human under his arm at least nine times,” she continued. “I would have been tired after the first time. It also took a lot of coordination for the pilot to hover a safe distance away from the raft.”
As the swimmer and helicopter crew continued the rescue evolution, the Coast Guard helicopter assumed the on-scene role for the final portion of the exercise.
“They’re getting a swimmer in to assess the situation, then they’re getting the personnel out as fast as they can,” Ritchey explained. “They were the final piece of the puzzle of actually making the exercise make sense of how it would work.”
After the simulated personnel recovery sequence, the helicopter crew had additional hoist opportunities available for practice. Perkins took part in one of the hoists, being lifted from the water in the rescue basket and brought beneath the helicopter.
“Being put into that basket under the Coast Guard helicopter was the most exciting thing of my life,” said Perkins. “I could not stop smiling. I couldn’t believe that I was there. I was also thinking about how cool it was for me to be there, but it was just another Tuesday for the guys in the Coast Guard. They gave me an Oreo cookie when I got to the helicopter, so that made it extra sweet. But then I thought about how that happens to people on their worst day. That can be a scary and life-threatening experience for a patient.”
Perkins’ role as a medic also connected the maritime portion of the exercise to the medical response that would follow a real-world rescue.
“The Coast Guard helicopter helped me connect my role as medic to the larger exercise because there is always a medic or nurse on the helicopter,” said Perkins. “They also had fake patients in the exercise with cards that had their injuries, and they read them out loud to me so that I could start thinking about how I would treat the patients.”
For Schaffer, the exercise gave participants from different communities an opportunity to practice working together before they might need to do so during an actual emergency.
“We want them to understand the effectiveness of equipment and the ability of personnel recovery forces to report, locate, support, recover and reintegrate them,” said Schaffer. “Castaway is always an experience to see and evaluate aircrew in the raft, aircrew in the air, how the assets coordinate together, and to offer up an opportunity that these different entities, like the Guard and the active and the Coast Guard, these disparate entities don’t necessarily work together on a regular basis, and it gives them an opportunity to do so.”
By the end of the exercise, the participants had experienced the full progression of a maritime personnel recovery scenario: preparing survival equipment, communicating their location, signaling aircraft, receiving supplies, coordinating with rescue personnel and being recovered from the water.
“Effective communication is huge when dealing with such extreme elements, but communication is important regardless,” said Perkins. “I had a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I’m extremely grateful to be a part of an exercise with multiple components and branches. Hands-on learning is most effective and fun.”
Schaffer said the training reinforces a message that extends beyond those who participated in the exercise.
“Where you end up alone, you want to know somebody is coming for you,” said Schaffer. “This is the window for everybody in the Delmarva area to interact with that process and that mechanism, and I think that provides a lot of valuable experience for those involved.”