WASHINGTON, June 8 -- Air Force Capt. Scott Francis O'Grady, who was rescued after spending 5 1/2 days in Bosnian Serb territory after his plane was shot down, was an exceptional student in military survival training, Pentagon officials said Thursday. Adm. William Owens, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says, 'Scott O'Grady, we understand, was a fellow who paid particular attention to his survival training.' Owens said O'Grady's personal interest in survival training played a crucial role in his ability to survive the ordeal. O'Grady, 29, survived more than five days of chilling temperatures with a blanket and minimal amounts of food and water after being shot down by a Bosnian Serb missile while flying a U.S. F-16 fighter jet on a routine NATO patrol mission over Bosnia Herzegovina. The Pentagon said there may have been hostile Bosnian Serb forces in O'Grady's immediate area. 'This is a very capable young officer,' Air Force Col. John Chapman, joint services coordinator for survival training, said of O'Grady. By coming out of a treacherous situation relatively unscathed, O'Grady 'obviously is very careful and takes care to prepare himself well,' Chapman said. Like all other military pilots, Brooklyn-born O'Grady attended intense survival training courses. O'Grady may have become interested in survival training when he first learned to fly in Spokane, Wash. He received a private pilot's license from a flight instructor in Spokane who was an Air Force survival teacher in his off-time duty. O'Grady attended the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz, where he received a degree in 1989 in Aerospace Aviation Managment.
He entered the Air Force in 1989, and did well enough in flight school to attend elite pilot training at Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas. The base is used for European-NATO joint pilot training. After learning to fly F-16s, O'Grady attended survival training at Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane. The school teaches Air Force aircrews combat survival, evasion, resistance, escape and recovery training to enable pilots 'to survive anywhere, anytime and return with honor,' a Fairchild spokesman said. O'Grady went through a 17-day program that includes seven days of classroom training, a week on field training, and a week on resistance and escape. 'The training is geared toward providing global survival and evasion capability,' Chapman said, because military pilots don't know what part of the world they may run into trouble on the ground if their planes crash or are shot down. Essentially,'They're taught to move from a basic survival situation into a potential evasion situation and how to take care of themselves and avoid capture,' Chapman said. They also are schooled in what to do if they are captured by enemy troops. O'Grady 'paid attention, obviously, to his survival and evasion training,' Chapman said. 'I know in his training he was taught to find water, even to eat insects or anything else to get him nourishment if he got hungry enough, ' Chapman said. Chapman, who was the commander of the survival training school at Fairchild from 1992 to 1994, said he has personnally eaten crickets and ants to survive in the wild, and that the school tries 'to get you over your food aversions.' Because of follow-on training U.S. pilots receive for the specific area they are flying over, O'Grady was probably well coached on the type of flora and fauna avaialable near Bihac, Chapman said. 'With that in mind, they'll have some basic idea of the things they can eat,' he said. Chapman, a veteran fighter pilot from the Vietnam War, said he could not give an accurate portrayal of O'Grady's experiences while he was hiding out in war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina but he could speculate what the pilot may have gone through. F-16 warplanes are equipped with parachutes that open automatically at about 14,000 feet. The planes are very quiet and the ejections are very loud, Chapman said. When O'Grady ejected he would have been able to guide the parachute to a safe and desirable location to land. Chapman said O'Grady was wearing a survival vest containing a global positioning system receiver, survival radio and distress signal beacon, a first aid kit, a compass and camouflage paint. O'Grady also had a survival kit and one-man raft embedded in his ejection seat which released automatically when he ejected from his F- 16. The kit is attached by a 35-40 foot rope under his parachute. Included in the 35-pound survival kit are some flares, a survival radio, an emergency beacon transmitter, extra batteries, a survival knife, a 9-mm handgun, compass, and a small amount of food and water. The Pentagon reported that O'Grady landed in a rugged, hilly area near Bihac that was thick with pine trees. 'I know it was a rugged area, I've looked at the maps,' Chapman said. Chapman said maps identify the region near the Bihac enclave where O'Grady was rescued as having 'karst,' or rugged terrain with sharp vertical drops. 'We had (karst) in Vietnam when I flew over there,' Chapman said. 'It's the kind of area that you don't want to travel in at night because you could find yourself taking one step and dropping 100 feet.' While the geology had its dangers, it gave O'Grady 'great opportunity to evade, as evidenced by the fact that he didn't go very far,' Chapman said. The pilot was rescued only a few kilometers from where he originally landed by parachute, the Pentagon reported. After a week of living on the land and avoiding capture by Bosnian Serb soldiers, a NATO plane flying over Bosnia picked up O'Grady's radio distress signal and sent a massive force to his rescue. In all, 40 aircraft participated in the emergency rescue mission, the Pentagon said. The force was one to be reckoned with and included EF-111 and EA-6B radar jamming planes to thwart possible surface-to-air missiles, and Harrier attack jets, A-10 Thunderbolt 'Warthogs,' and F-16 jet fighters to provide air cover. The planes made contact with O'Grady about 25 miles from his location. The pilot gave rescuers details on the terrain and a general threat assessment of the area, Owens said. O'Grady had positioned himself at the top of a hill and as rescue teams approached him they could see the yellow smoke from his emergency flare billowing into the air. 'I do not know Scott O'Grady but I feel like I've learned a lot about him over the last several days,' said Chapman. Chapman said he would like to meet O'Grady to learn more about his ordeal and to gauge the effectivness of the Pentagon's survival training programs. Meanwhile, President Clinton himself later disclosed that O'Grady had only moments to react once he hit the ground in Bosnia. Clinton said that O'Grady told him during the phone call that hostile Bosnian Serb troops were near him within 3-5 minutes after he was shot down and landed by parachute in western Bosnia.
