When the Air Force’s 1365th Photo Squadron shot and produced the film “ADC Life Support Training School” in 1968, Air Defense Command (ADC) had just been re-named Aerospace Defense Command. The Command’s mission was to provide comprehensive air defense of the Continental United States (CONUS). ADC therefore directly controlled all active measures, and was tasked to coordinate all passive means of air defense. This video, uploaded by YouTuber AIRBOYD, takes a look at ADC’s school designed to train flight crews to survive during and after ejection or bailout.
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At this time ADC was equipped primarily with Convair F-106 Delta Dart and F-102 Delta Dagger single-engine jet interceptors. The First, Fourth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Air Forces along with Air Forces Iceland were responsible for a maximum of 25 Air Defense Sectors by up to 23 Air Divisions. Reorganized, consolidated, and restructured several times between ADC’s establishment in March of 1946, its brief deactivation in 1950 and its reestablishment on 1951, ADC became a separate command in 1975. ADC was inactivated in March of 1980 and its mission passed on to Air Force and Air National Guard squadrons.
ADC’s week-long Life Support Training Schools taught many of the same principles as the Air Force’s other survival schools as well as the Navy’s Aircrew survival school at Pensacola. While not specific to ADC training or ejection, the procedures and practice methods are well represented in the film. Landing procedures, harness egress and parachute handling, water landings, personal flotation device procedures, survival raft procedures, parachute dragging, an actual landing after parasailing release, and much more are shown in the film. The training was conducted at Tyndall AFB in the Florida panhandle and at Perrin AFB near Sherman in northern Texas beginning in 1964.
