For over fifty years there has been a paratrooper Jump School at Fort Benning. While some elements of the training have been altered in the course of a half century, the core curriculum is essentially unchanged from World War II. The course is taught and maintained by the 1st Battalion of the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment (1/507th). The staff of the1/507th acts as the Army’s parachute schoolhouse, maintaining a training curriculum that has trained paratroops from all over the world. Also,1/507th provides these training services for more than just the U.S. Army. Since other parts of the U.S. military require parachute-trained personnel (Navy SEALs, Marine Force Recon, Air Force Special Operations, Coast Guard Air-Sea Rescue, etc.), the 1/507th provides the training to certify their personnel as jump-qualified. As an added responsibility, numerous other nations frequently send their soldiers to Fort Benning to become paratroopers.
The 1/507th is currently commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Steven C. Sifers, with Command Sergeant Major William Cox as his senior enlisted advisor. The 1/507th is composed of a headquarters company and four training companies (Companies A through D). Within the headquarters company are branches which control the curriculum for the Basic Airborne course. These include ground tower and jump training, as well as separate curriculums for the jumpmaster and Pathfinder courses, which are also managed by the 1/507th. There is a separate support unit (Company E) which provides maintenance and packing services for the battalion’s pool of equipment and parachutes. The 1/507th also controls a command exhibition parachute team (the Silver Wings), does off-site (non- resident) j umpmaster and Drop Zone Safety Team Leader (DZSTL) training, certifies airborne instructors, conducts airborne refresher training, as well as writing and maintaining the Army’s standard airborne training doctrine. The 1/507th has the enormous job of training up to 14,000 jump-qualified personnel every year. That’s a lot of work!
At the core of the 1/507th’s mission is the Basic Airborne Course (BAC) program of instruction, what the Army and the students call Jump School. The course of instruction is short and to the point. It teaches the students how to jump safely out of the two primary classes of cargo aircraft, and then how to land safely with the basic T- 10-series parachute system. Jump School also is designed to test the physical and mental toughness of the prospective paratroopers.
The class runs over a total of 125 classroom hours (not including physical training) over just three weeks. Week 1 involves training on the ground, familiarizing the student with their new equipment and the basic physical skills required to operate it safely. Week 2 has the students training on a variety of towers, including the 250- foot/76.2-meter-tall World’s Fair units. Finally, Week 3 involves the students jumping a total of five times each from actual Air Force transport aircraft, and obtaining their final jump certification.
All this is in addition to a rigorous regimen of physical training or PT (that’s Army for running in formation). A
Each year, the 1/507th runs a total of forty-four Basic Airborne School (BAS) classes, each of which currently contains some 370 students. This could create, if all of the students programmed were to graduate, a pool of some 16,200 new paratroopers per year. A number fail to do so, through dropouts and rejections, so this generates the approximately 10,000 jump-qualified personnel that are needed each year. This number is going down, though, as budget cuts and personnel drawdowns take their effect. Current Army plans have the number of students per class going to just 307 in FY- 1998, dropping the number of possible paratroop graduates to just 14,300. Surprisingly, most of the students who report for Jump School actually pass. Over the past two years (FY-1994 and -1995), of the 31,976 personnel who reported for airborne training, 27,234 successfully completed the course, an average of over 85 percent.
Still, the staff of the 1/507th continually worries about the ones who don’t make it. If you are wondering just how the dropouts are distributed, the following table shows the tale of just who makes it in Jump School, and who does not.
As the table shows, women students are three times more likely to drop out than their male counterparts. This may be skewed somewhat by the fact that the male students outnumber females by about fifteen to one, though. The various reasons for the dropouts are quite obvious when you look at them.
As the table shows, the vast majority of the dropouts are a result of medical problems. These range from simple sprains and fractures, to the heat injuries that are so common to Fort Benning during the terrible months of summer. Failed PT runs and administrative problems cover the majority of the remaining dropouts, with other causes (failed landing fall and jump qualifications, etc.) making up just 5 percent of the rest. Therefore, the high overall rate of graduation from Jump School is a tribute to the professionalism of the staff of the 1/507th.
That professionalism is most embodied in a small group of noncommissioned officers (NCOs) who make up the basic instructor cadre of the 1/507th. These are the Black Hats, the NCO drill instructors (DIs) who perform the drilling and generally care for the welfare of the Jump School students. While their headgear is less imposing than the Marine Corps DIs’ Smoky Bear campaign hats (they wear black baseball caps), they are just as caring and protective of their charges. Like the Marine DIs, the Black Hats provide an institutional memory and glue to the Jump School. The Black Hats are the tribal elders of the paratroopers, and the keepers of their traditions.
Jump School: Three Weeks at Hell’s Gate
“Is everybody happy?” cried the sergeant looking up,
Our Hero feebly answered, “Yes,” and then they stood him up,
He leaped right out into the bast his static line unhooked,
He ain’t gonna jump no more!
Gory, Gory, what a helluva way to die!
Gory, Gory, what a helluva way to die!
Gory, Gory, what a helluva way to die!
He ain’t gonna jump no more!
Nobody in the U.S. Army can be ordered to go to jump school, and everyone who does is a volunteer. Still, Fort Benning has an excess of qualified volunteers for the spaces at Jump School, so coveted is the airborne badge within the ranks of the U.S. military. Strangely, the qualifications to get in are not that tough. You start by being in the Army, and must have completed basic training or have been commissioned as an officer. A potential airborne trooper must also have their first specialty/technical school, which defines your basic Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) code. This means that a student could be a brand-new private first class (PFC) who has just completed training as an infantryman or a communications technician and then goes immediately to Jump School. Other than this, the qualifications to become a paratrooper are surprisingly easy. There are no particular job specialty requirements, nor is rank a consideration.
Student Handout (SH) 57-1, the basic
• Volunteer for the BAS course.
• Be less than thirty-six years of age.
• Pass the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT).
A passing score on the APFT is almost absurdly easy to achieve. It involves successfully completing just
