Training to perfection

Members of the 56th Rescue Squadron conduct post-flight inspections on an HH-60G Pave Hawk during exercise Voijek Valour at Hullavington Airfield, England, March 4, 2016. The aircraft has proven itself in combat search and rescue missions since Operation Desert Storm and continues the pararescue CSAR mission to this day. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Emerson Nuñez)

Training to perfection

1st Lt. Andrej Pulver, 56th Rescue Squadron co-pilot, left, and Capt. John Golden 56th RQS pilot, perform a pre-flight check during exercise Voijek Valour at Hullavington Airfield, England, March 2, 2016. The exercise included six helicopters, 250 British soldiers and more than a dozen jets conducting scenarios across Salisbury Plain. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Emerson Nuñez)

Training to perfection

1st Lt. Andrej Pulver, 56th Rescue Squadron co-pilot, performs a pre-flight check during exercise Voijek Valour at Hullavington Airfield, England, March 2, 2016. The 56th RQS provides humanitarian assistance, non-combatant evacuation and disaster relief capability for the U.S. European Command combatant commander and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in peacetime. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Emerson Nuñez)

Training to perfection

An HH-60G Pave Hawk from the 56th Rescue Squadron and a British Army AH-64 Apache from 663 Squadron, 3 Regiment Army Air Corps, take off from the flightline during exercise Voijek Valour at Hullavington Airfield, England, Feb. 29, 2016. The exercise included six helicopters, 250 British Army soldiers and more than a dozen jets conducting scenarios across Salisbury Plain. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Emerson Nuñez)

Training to perfection

Staff Sgt. Joseph Bland, 56th RQS special missions aviator, scans the terrain outside an HH-60G Pave Hawk during exercise Voijek Valour at Salisbury Plain, England, March 4, 2016. The 56th RQS from Royal Air Force Lakenheath and the 7th Special Operations Squadron from RAF Mildenhall flew to Hullavington Airfield to train alongside the British Army and Royal Air Force. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Emerson Nuñez)

Training to perfection

Published March 14, 2016
By Staff Sgt. Emerson Nuñez
48th Fighter Wing Public Affairs

ROYAL AIR FORCE LAKENHEATH, England -- Whizzing through the air, an HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter pilot flies high above the earth.

Suddenly, the engine stops turning the rotor, and the helicopter begins descending back down to the ground.

The pilot remains calm and lets the Pave Hawk drop before letting the engine turn the main rotor again and continuing with the flight.

The pilot allowed the aircraft to autorotate, which is a descending maneuver pilots practice to ensure they can make an emergency landing in case of engine failure.

The 56th Rescue Squadron pilots practice autorotation and train to perfect the art of flying a Pave Hawk so they'll be ready to rescue someone when called upon.

"Our mission has some added pressure since we're about saving someone's life," said 1st Lt. Andrej Pulver, 56th RQS co-pilot. I "If any mistake is made at the wrong time, then that would be catastrophic to the mission and the person's life."

In order to ensure they can handle any possible scenario, officers spend years training to be pilots, but no matter how long or how often pilots prepare, the potential for errors still exists.

"In training, I never want to make any mistakes, and I want to get everything right the first time," Pulver said. "But, while making mistakes isn't desired, it's still inevitable, so it's important to focus on those mistakes in any environment and fix it instead of letting it stay wrong."

Made in a controlled training environment, mistakes are used as learning experiences for everyone involved in the training.

"Mistakes are something we focus on a lot, and even the most experienced people make them," Pulver said. "There is a lot of focus on what went wrong during the flight, how the issue came to unfold, and how to avoid it in the future."

With the three years of training it took for Pulver to become an HH-60 pilot, plenty of lessons were learned throughout the years.

"I never had anything dangerous where my life was truly in danger if one thing had gone wrong," Pulver said. "I had a few situations earlier in each phase, where if I made a big mistake while not in a training environment, things could have gone badly quickly for me. But that's why there is so much training, so we can practice the life and death situations without being in a real aircraft."

As a school house instructor, Staff Sgt. Joseph Bland, 56th RQS special missions aviator, has seen his fair share of errors done in training environments, even one which caused a change to training procedures.

Bland stated that he had a trainee who, before a flight forgot to close a compartment outside of the aircraft, which contained metal trays. During the flight, the trays fell out of the compartment and damaged the helicopter's propeller blades.

After the incident, a change in current procedures was made to ensure the situation would never happen again.

Training remains a vital part of military life to ensure Airmen can do their work right the first time. Training presents a safe environment where, if anything wrong were to happen, it would provide a valuable lesson to the Airmen participating in the training.