Hey! I was a rescue swimmer before the Guard decided we needed trained rescue swimmers <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> My first tour of duty was at Airstation Kodiak and I'm one of the few blackshoes( aviation personel are nicknamed brownshoes) who qualified as an aircrewman, we being short on personel. In those days we flew HH3 and HH52 amphib helicopters. If we couldn't land in the water or the survivor was to weak to climb into the Stokes litter somebody had to jump in , which I did 2 times. Radio discipline was a little different too. It was more along the lines of " Kav shoved out" followed by "Survivor aboard, do we want to keep Kav?" and the classis " Kav throwing up. Oh man, he had Tapioca and S.O.S. this morning." It's not swimming in heavy surf that will get you, but looking at it from a helo door trying to judge jump distance <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />