The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Avon Park Survival Training and Postwar Military Operations, 1949–1952

Between the close of World War II and the escalation of the Korean War, the military reservation east of Avon Park transitioned from a wartime bombardment training field into a specialized survival school for Strategic Air Command (SAC) aircrews, while enduring sharp fluctuations in federal civilian employment.[inrmp-2004]

Wartime Personnel and Demobilization

During World War II, Avon Park Army Air Field operated as an active cantonment accommodating thousands of service personnel across bombardment training units, airfield maintenance groups, and segregated base support detachments.[inrmp-2004] African American enlisted soldiers assigned to base operations—including Private First Class Alexander Perry of Covington, Georgia, stationed at the installation in June 1943—served in logistical and airfield maintenance roles during the height of B-17 and B-26 combat crew instruction.[adw-19430625]

Following the cessation of hostilities in September 1945, flight operations were curtailed and the installation transitioned toward caretaker status, though maintaining a substantial civilian maintenance and range maintenance force.[inrmp-2004] In August 1949, Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson instituted a nationwide austerity directive mandating the dismissal of 135,000 civilian military employees across the Department of Defense.[miami-times-19490827]

At Avon Park Field, the economy order resulted in the termination of 694 civilian workers out of a total staff of 706, reducing the base to a skeleton workforce of 12 personnel.[miami-times-19490827] The 98.3 percent reduction represented one of the most severe proportional civilian contractions among Florida military installations, exceeding cutbacks at Key West Naval Station (178 reduced), Pensacola Naval Air Station (393 reduced), and Orlando Air Base (16 reduced).[miami-times-19490827]

The Strategic Air Command Survival School (1952)

With the outbreak of the Korean War and the rapid expansion of SAC operations at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, the Avon Park range was reactivated for live bombing runs and environmental survival training.[inrmp-2004] Because bomber crews operating long-range B-29, B-50, and B-47 aircraft faced extreme hazards of forced ditching in remote or hostile territory, the Air Force instituted mandatory six-day wilderness survival courses in the subtropical scrub, pine flatwoods, and river marshes of the Avon Park reservation.[milford-chronicle-19520404]

The survival training apparatus at Avon Park was directed by range commander Captain John Kelley, who supervised instructional teams led by seasoned survival experts, including Technical Sergeant Josh Henson of Waycross, Georgia.[milford-chronicle-19520404]

During early March 1952 (3–8 March 1952), a representative SAC aircrew from MacDill AFB—comprising pilot Captain Joseph O’Leary of California, co-pilot First Lieutenant John McKibbon of Gainesville, Georgia, Lieutenant Hayes Dickerson of Milford, Delaware, and Sergeants Truesdale (St. Petersburg), Hinson (South Carolina), and Gimble (Philadelphia)—underwent the six-day field exercise.[milford-chronicle-19520404]

The training curriculum required airmen to subsist entirely off the native terrain without rations:

  • Emergency Shelter: Crews constructed teepee-style shelters using standard nylon parachutes.[milford-chronicle-19520404]
  • Improvised Equipment: Individual nylon shroud lines from parachutes were unbraided and repurposed as fishing lines for use in range streams and sloughs.[milford-chronicle-19520404]
  • Nocturnal Foraging and Hunting: Trainees conducted night sweeps with flashlights and machetes to capture wild rabbits, relying on beam reflections (“radar fashion”) from animal eyes and sharp whistling to freeze quarry.[milford-chronicle-19520404]
  • Native Flora and Fauna Subsistence: Aircrews harvested hearts of native cabbage palms (“swamp cabbage”), water lily rootstocks, and feral oranges, supplementing their diet with trapped river otters, while learning to avoid rabid foxes, diseased opossums, and venomous eastern diamondback rattlesnakes while preserving beneficial eastern kingsnakes.[milford-chronicle-19520404]

Media Documentation and National Broadcast

The rigorous survival regime at Avon Park drew national attention during 1952. NBC radio commentator W. W. Chaplin underwent the training program under Sergeant Henson and published an account, We Must Survive, in the February 1952 issue of Coronet magazine, detailing Captain Kelley’s mastery of the terrain, including hand-capturing an eight-foot alligator.[milford-chronicle-19520404] The March 1952 exercises were concurrently recorded by military and commercial camera crews, producing a documentary segment entitled Avon Park Survival that was broadcast nationwide on network television in the spring of 1952.[milford-chronicle-19520404]

The survival school established operating techniques that influenced Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) curricula, cementing the Avon Park reservation’s status as a premier multi-service training laboratory.

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
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unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
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society

Sources

  1. Elaine Townsend Dickerson, In The Air Force: Avon Park Survival (1952)
  2. The Miami Times, Military Jobs: Defense Department Civilian Reductions (1949)
  3. Atlanta Daily World, Covington, Georgia: Pfc. Alexander Perry Stationed at Avon Park, Fla. (1943)
  4. United States Air Force, Final Environmental Assessment: Implementation of the Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan, Avon Park Air Force Range (2004)

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