If you fail, everyone dies.ĭo the qualifications for combat controllers exceed those required by the other U.S. The downside is you are one man-alone-with the responsibility for everyone. The result is that the combat control community works with the best of every service, which allows you to learn a diverse set of tactics. Typically, we are attached to sister special-operations-force organizations such as SEALs or Green Berets. Yes, in the sense that they are not with other combat controllers. Is it typical for a combat controller to be deployed alone? The combat control community continues to work hard at improving that attrition number because we are critically short of controllers, though for obvious reasons the standards remain inviolate. What is the washout rate for students going through the combat controller program?Īround 90 percent. I’d add that the best controllers I’ve known throughout my 30-plus years in service were all intellectually very curious individuals. Tenacity and a drive to do whatever it takes to accomplish what is before you.
What are the most important skills a combat controller should have? Love is not a term used by people to describe combat, but it’s accurate in my experience, having been in combat, and the truest essence of his actions. It was love for those he fought with, extending to those he didn’t even know. His decisions were to a calling higher than duty. A couple sleepless weeks followed our conversation, which led to the realization that I had to write it because I knew all the parties involved and had been a combat controller most of my career.”ĭid Chapman’s actions that morning exceed the call of duty? I wasn’t interested in going into what-for me-was my own past. Initially, I agreed only to help her shape a proposal and introduce her to my agent. Schilling: The book actually came to me through Chapman’s sister, my co-author Lori, who’d been trying to write it for a number of years. Dan Schilling spoke with Air & Space senior associate editor Diane Tedeschi in July.Īir & Space: Why did you decide to write this book? The book also reports on the work and culture of combat controllers. His actions that day in March 2002-for which he posthumously received the Medal of Honor-saved 23 men, including a team of U.S. Air Force combat controller, fended off al Qaeda fighters even after he was shot and mortally wounded. Dan Schilling, who spent more than 30 years in the military, and Lori Chapman Longfritz, John Chapman’s sister, have written Alone at Dawn, an unblinking look at what happened when a combat rescue went wrong.
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