“December 7th is a day that will forever remain infamous,” Roosevelt told the nation the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the pivotal moment that marked America’s entry into the war against Japan. The United States would later declare war on Germany and Italy on December 11, just hours after the two countries declared war on the United States.
During the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, most Americans could not swim. When the battle moved from sea to sky that December morning, the fate of swimming as a sport was changed forever.
Due to a severe shortage of pilots, the US military stepped up efforts in every air force to train and recruit more pilots. The V-5 Naval Aviation Cadet Training Program is one of the most rigorous and prestigious training routes, training thousands of Top Gun Navy pilots.
According to a U.S. Navy outdoor survival instructor, more than half of new cadets go through basic training without being able to swim, even though swimming is a vital skill for pilots on combat missions in the United States. ocean. While 75 percent of Navy pilots who were shot down or forced to land landed safely, only 5 percent managed to land because they couldn’t swim or find food or water on islands and in unfamiliar terrain.
Olympic swimmers, major league baseball players, professional football players and athletes who have supported the Wheaties’ Breakfast of Champions campaign are among the tens of thousands of young people aged 18 to 26 who have applied to join the bold Naval Aviation program. Modeled after Annapolis training, the V-5 Pre-Flight School has been able to hire some of the best swim instructors in the country thanks to their commitment to sharing their experience for free on five campuses across the country. To put this in today’s context, imagine Michael Phelps teaching Navy cadets how to swim.
Cadets must complete 90 days of rigorous physical training and naval academic studies before flying one of the most powerful military fighter jets. Several former cadets stated that “swimming was the hardest lesson before the flight” and that about a quarter of the cadets were expelled because of it. Several students drowned or otherwise died during this ground training program, but given wartime conditions, the strict standards and inherent dangers are understandable.
To survive being fired upon and sucked in by a sinking aircraft, cadets in the Navy’s pre-flight swimming course must swim a mile and dive fifty feet. A few weeks later, cadets who could not swim jumped off the platform into a pool of burning oil. Cadets also have to walk through the infamous Dilbert Dunker, a mock cockpit used to teach pilots how to escape a sinking plane and made famous in the movie An Officer and a Gentleman.
Given that 80 percent of these marine pilots may have to land on water during combat, the training is focused on endurance and the ability to swim for hours in rough water until they are rescued. PreFlight uses competition from top swimming universities like Stanford and other military bases like Camp Lejeune to boost morale. In 1944, cadets from St. Mary’s College Flying School in Moraga, California set new records in the following heats: 24.3 seconds per 50 yard freestyle, 55.2 seconds per 100 yard freestyle, 23 minutes per mile, and 13.6 seconds for a 25 yard swim and 20.8 seconds for a 25 yard swim.
During the war, the schools changed about 80,000 cadets and more than 1,000 instructors. President George W. Bush (one of the program’s youngest cadets) and Lt. Gerald R. Ford taught pre-flight swimming.
Today, swimming education still plays an important role at Pearl Harbor. The Naval Aviation School Command Squad at Pearl Harbor screens and trains prospective search and rescue swimmers before school, teaches open water survival skills, conducts secondary swimming tests, and directly assists the Central Pacific Training Group in training search and rescue swimmers in Pearl Harbor.
A feature on Pool News brought to you by Markus Packer of Pool Magazine. Markus Packer is a pool builder and pool maintenance specialist with 20 years of experience in the pool industry. In addition to being a swimming pool professional, Marcus is a writer and longtime contributor to Newsweek’s home improvement section and more recently Florida Travel + Life. Want to share an idea or tip with Pool Magazine? Write to [email protected] your ideas for stories.
There was a headline on social media this morning, “Blast in the Aquarium.” A huge aquarium in the lobby of the Radisson Blu hotel exploded on Friday, pouring thousands of gallons of water, tropical fish and debris onto the cold streets of Berlin.
Several media publications, including The New York Times, reported that at 50 feet tall and 38 feet wide, the AquaDom was the largest free-standing aquarium in the world at the time of the explosion and had to be evacuated. Until 6 am local time.
After more than 100 rescuers arrived at the scene near the main Alexanderplatz square, the publication reported that at least two people were taken to local hospitals with glass-related injuries.
The circular aquarium surrounding the hotel’s glass elevators offers an inside view of marine life and contains approximately 1,500 tropical fish from 100 different species.
“It’s a devastated picture with a lot of dead fish and broken pieces, fish that could have been saved froze to death,” said federal parliament spokeswoman Sandra Visser, who was staying at the hotel.
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