There
are few Civil Air Patrol groups that are surrounded by as much mystery as the Cold War era
"77th Ranger Support Unit". Known to very few people outside of its own ranks,
it was based in the wilderness of Drummond Island, Michigan, and conducted its training
and developed its methods in seclusion.
 Because of
the deeply classified nature of its operations, the extent of the unit's influence and
reach is still not fully known. It is known that the 77th's methods included harsh and
realistic training conditions. There are reports that the 77th was involved in creating
caches of supplies, food and weapons for use after a nuclear exchange with the Soviets.
There also may have been urban environment operations in Pontiac Michigan; and there are
persistent rumors of an exercise involving airbase and missile silo infiltrations to help
test security at these facilities.
One
thing is certain: the 77th cannot be found on the organizational charts of the time and an
alternate name - the 12th Special Operations Group - was sometimes used as a cover.
The
single verifiable operation by this unit is the creation and operation of the Drummond
Island Ranger School. This school was originally meant to address unit cohesion problems
in the 77th's parent unit, Oakland County Group XII. The school was later expanded to
include students from throughout Michigan Wing. Secrecy was so much a part of the unit's
mindset that even the school had a cover name: The Drummond Island Search and Rescue
Encampment.
CadetStuff.org
recently received a confidential congressional hearing transcript about these cold war
operations. This led CadetStuff.org to contact several individuals who were in the 77th's
area of operations during the late 1970's and early 1980's and to file Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) requests for pertinent documents. This painstaking investigation
has uncovered - through reliable, although protected, sources - pictures, travel orders,
team leader notes, a unit newsletter, and, most importantly, debriefing reports by one of
the unit's staff members. These may have originally been gathered by the 77th's historian
before higher authority ordered all records concerning the unit destroyed or classified.
This secrecy has made it impossible for other units to learn from the hard-won experiences
of the 77th. With the end of the Cold War, the 77th's records are finally being
declassified and are available to those who know what to ask for.
CadetStuff.org,
in the interest of providing cadets the widest possible range of training materials and
information, will be publishing select passages from these sources as well as some of the
supporting materials. It is our hope that cadets today can learn from the lessons and
mistakes of this legendary - and nearly forgotten - unit. |
