OP
sweatfrog:
Do the civilian training agencies teach more or better skills than the military? It would seem that trained and certified to use scuba would mean just that--trained and certified to use scuba.
Question about military trained divers
- Thread starter jbd
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Do the civilian training agencies teach more or better skills than the military? It would seem that trained and certified to use scuba would mean just that--trained and certified to use scuba.
Things have changed but I dont think that much. We were so deep into the buddy system and buddy skills it almost over rode some of the other training issues we had.
Anytime the instructors called for buddies you better be able to touch each other. That meant all the time except off time, which there wasnt much of.
If I was on the pot my buddy better be on the one next to me or the flies hit the Westinghouse. At chow we had to eat together. In the barracks we had bunks next to each other. In the water we had to be within reach at ALL times we werent on surface supplied air.
The consequences were serious. They MIGHT let you by once early in training if it was an out of the water situation. But once was all you might get. For a violation they would take a 6 hawser (sp) that had rings braided in 6 apart. It got wrapped around your waist and locked on so you were never more than 6 from your buddy 24-7. That was a death sentence. Nobody went much further in training with it on and both would wash out.
I know they cant use that anymore due to the kinder gentler military but it had a very serious affect on us when they could use it.
Most of the problems with military divers it not the training but the attitude they have towards civilian divers. Some of the military guys are just jerks with a better than everyone else attitude.
Not all-military divers got surface supplied or rebreather training. Not all-military divers are combat divers and not all are repair or salvage or research and so on. There are a lot of different fields and specialties just like in the civilian world.
Just like in the civilian world some are good divers and some are poor divers so you cant just say the whole group are poor divers. That would be the same as saying every civilian-trained diver is an accident waiting to happen.
My brother-in-law was a SEAL. What a fricken jerk he was and a piss poor civilian diver. Better than everyone else at everything anyone was doing. He was even better at molesting his own daughter. Even better at living until he took his own life.
I have good friends that were SEALS and they are good divers with great buddy skills. We joke all the time about tossing them a wrench and watching them try to kill someone with it and tossing me a gun so I can weld it to the bottom of a ship.
Done ranting.
Gary D.
Anytime the instructors called for buddies you better be able to touch each other. That meant all the time except off time, which there wasnt much of.
If I was on the pot my buddy better be on the one next to me or the flies hit the Westinghouse. At chow we had to eat together. In the barracks we had bunks next to each other. In the water we had to be within reach at ALL times we werent on surface supplied air.
The consequences were serious. They MIGHT let you by once early in training if it was an out of the water situation. But once was all you might get. For a violation they would take a 6 hawser (sp) that had rings braided in 6 apart. It got wrapped around your waist and locked on so you were never more than 6 from your buddy 24-7. That was a death sentence. Nobody went much further in training with it on and both would wash out.
I know they cant use that anymore due to the kinder gentler military but it had a very serious affect on us when they could use it.
Most of the problems with military divers it not the training but the attitude they have towards civilian divers. Some of the military guys are just jerks with a better than everyone else attitude.
Not all-military divers got surface supplied or rebreather training. Not all-military divers are combat divers and not all are repair or salvage or research and so on. There are a lot of different fields and specialties just like in the civilian world.
Just like in the civilian world some are good divers and some are poor divers so you cant just say the whole group are poor divers. That would be the same as saying every civilian-trained diver is an accident waiting to happen.
My brother-in-law was a SEAL. What a fricken jerk he was and a piss poor civilian diver. Better than everyone else at everything anyone was doing. He was even better at molesting his own daughter. Even better at living until he took his own life.
I have good friends that were SEALS and they are good divers with great buddy skills. We joke all the time about tossing them a wrench and watching them try to kill someone with it and tossing me a gun so I can weld it to the bottom of a ship.
Done ranting.
Gary D.
IMHO a military diver is taught under a mission orientated system that is no better or worse than any recreational system. It is just different.
It is difficult for a military trained diver to obtain a equivalent cert because there is no equivalent recreational cert for what military/commercial divers do.
The best way for someone with military/commercial experience to obtain a recreation cert is to bring a logbook and any documentation to a instructor and ask for the next level certificate. One example of this is the Advanced Open Water from PADI which is just 5 dives and a little book work. The instructor is given flexability in evaluating a divers skills before enrolling them in a AOW course and a check out dive to evaluate the diver would prove their skill level.
After the 5 dives, voila, a new AOW carded diver, and no problems in future. For this customer you could roll the EANx course into the AOW and qualify him/her for AOW and EANx at the same time.
More information on this topic is available in the GS&P section of the PADI Instructor Manual, FAQ numbers 14 and 15.
Have a great dive.
Paul.
It is difficult for a military trained diver to obtain a equivalent cert because there is no equivalent recreational cert for what military/commercial divers do.
The best way for someone with military/commercial experience to obtain a recreation cert is to bring a logbook and any documentation to a instructor and ask for the next level certificate. One example of this is the Advanced Open Water from PADI which is just 5 dives and a little book work. The instructor is given flexability in evaluating a divers skills before enrolling them in a AOW course and a check out dive to evaluate the diver would prove their skill level.
After the 5 dives, voila, a new AOW carded diver, and no problems in future. For this customer you could roll the EANx course into the AOW and qualify him/her for AOW and EANx at the same time.
More information on this topic is available in the GS&P section of the PADI Instructor Manual, FAQ numbers 14 and 15.
Have a great dive.
Paul.
Military training for SCUBA is far more complete than any agency's OW course. That's why YMCA and some other agencies will issue an OW card to military divers who show documentation of their training. All this discussion of Discover SCUBA and making them take an OW course is silly. It's also not necessary, send them to me, I'll issue certs to those with proper documentation.
Squalus
The Good Humor Guy
jbd:
All military training comes with a comprehensive breakdown on what is taught and sometimes class standings to. This is so we can transfer them to civilian education credits and certifications.
sharpenu
Contributor
Not all military training has such a breakdown. My school was classified. Our syllabus was classified. Our notes, books, tapes and everything else about it was classified. YOu couldn't even study in the barracks. In the classroom study only.
One of my roomates ( we were in 4 man dorms) wrote a paper which was promptly taken away and classified to a point where he wasn't allowed to read it.
Now, I can't get any sort of credit for ANY of what I learned. I gave up years ago.
One of my roomates ( we were in 4 man dorms) wrote a paper which was promptly taken away and classified to a point where he wasn't allowed to read it.
Now, I can't get any sort of credit for ANY of what I learned. I gave up years ago.
divdude
Guest
unless the rules have changed, the answer is yes. Pearl was issuing them as early as 1970. if you survived the training, you got your DM rating and C-Card (and your mae west, and your dual hose reg....
jbd:
All I know about military dive training is what I saw on a documentory about that followed some seals through dive training.
They dived open ciruit and O2 rebreathers. Much of the training shown was done with double hose regulators, double tanks and no BC of any kind. They spent lots of time being harrassed...having things torn off them and being knocked around, removing and replacing equipment...all while kneeling...no BC remember. Also lots of phisical fitness training.
At the end of the show they showed the graduates on a "mission" and it's a good thing they were in good shape because they were mostly vertical in the water and kicking like crazy all the time just to keep from sinking. By recreational standards they were as bad as I've ever seen. They had BCs here but apparantly weren't taught much about how to use them.
I don't know how representative this training was of other military training but not only would I not certify those divers but I wouldn't take them into OW until we worked on some basics of buoyancy control, trim and finning technique in a pool where they couldn't silt me out. You'd never see any thing if they were with you in OW around here...they could silt things up from 20 ft off the bottom.
They wouldn't even survive a emt shear attack from a savy recreational diver. You could follow their bubble trail down to them in the silt cloud and they'd never see it comming. LOL
They dived open ciruit and O2 rebreathers. Much of the training shown was done with double hose regulators, double tanks and no BC of any kind. They spent lots of time being harrassed...having things torn off them and being knocked around, removing and replacing equipment...all while kneeling...no BC remember. Also lots of phisical fitness training.
At the end of the show they showed the graduates on a "mission" and it's a good thing they were in good shape because they were mostly vertical in the water and kicking like crazy all the time just to keep from sinking. By recreational standards they were as bad as I've ever seen. They had BCs here but apparantly weren't taught much about how to use them.
I don't know how representative this training was of other military training but not only would I not certify those divers but I wouldn't take them into OW until we worked on some basics of buoyancy control, trim and finning technique in a pool where they couldn't silt me out. You'd never see any thing if they were with you in OW around here...they could silt things up from 20 ft off the bottom.
They wouldn't even survive a emt shear attack from a savy recreational diver. You could follow their bubble trail down to them in the silt cloud and they'd never see it comming. LOL
sweatfrog:
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