Photo By Master Sgt. Vin Stevens | Sgt. Mickey L. Hill, senior mechanic at the 82nd Special Troops Battalion motor pool,...... read more read more
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FORT BRAGG, N.C. - Sgt. Mickey L. Hill is a father of three who likes to spend his time paintballing on the weekends and is someone who has played a significant part in developing a training device now used throughout the Army.
Since he was a young boy, Hill has had an interest in working with and building cars. This interest naturally carried over when he became a mechanic in the Army. “I’ve always enjoyed buying an old beat-up car and working on it,” said Hill. “I wasn’t trying to turn a profit on the cars I fixed up; I just enjoyed the challenge of working on something that was broken.”
Hill found himself in a unique position when he was asked to join a team working on a project dealing with vehicle rollovers. Little did he know that a few months later he would be receiving an award from the Hon. John McHugh, Secretary of the Army, for his involvement in this project.
“When Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom kicked off, we noticed that there were a lot of deaths occurring from vehicles rolling into canals,” said Sgt. Mickey L. Hill, senior mechanic at the 82nd Special Troops Battalion Motor Pool and Springfield, Mo. native. “What we found from research was that 50 percent of the people who died in the canals had their hand on the door handle, but they forgot or didn’t know how the combat lock, which is a different type of handle, needs to be pulled.”
The Humvee Egress Assistance Trainer (HEAT) was first unveiled at the FORSCOM Safety Forum six months after its construction began. The goal was to get as many of the commanding officers in attendance to experience the HEAT.
“When we were building the HEAT., we didn’t have any designs. It was basically- take this Humvee, get it onto this metal A-frame and keep it under $15,000,” said Hill. “As we built it, the Army Corps of Engineers would come in and take measurements of everything we were doing. That way, when we were done building the prototype, they would already have a set of blueprints.”
Less than a year into the design phase, Army National Guard Ground Safety Officer Chief Warrant Officer 4 Rik Cox, an Arlington, Va., native, who had come up with the idea, assembled a group of people to build the first prototype of what has become known today as the HEAT.
“Anytime you have a solder in your organization that is involved in something that impacts the Army as a whole is a positive thing,” said Sgt. 1st Class Jeffery Christopher, 82nd STB Motor Pool noncommissioned officer-in-charge and New York City native. “It shows that if you come up with a good idea, the Army will listen and institute it.”
“A lot of the officers we put through [the HEAT] thought that this was some kind of joke,” said Hill. “After we turned them upside down, they realized that it was more difficult than they had anticipated. Usually, we say that you have about eight seconds to get out of a vehicle after it rolls over. When we were conducting the training with the officers, nobody could get out in under a minute.”
The HEAT suddenly became an item of interest for commanding officers of all branches as they realized that the threat a rolled vehicle represents to soldiers was significant. The HEAT became so important, that in a few years, it was required that all soldiers deploying go through the HEAT to have a better understanding of what to do in case their vehicle rolls over.
“This kind of training was a huge benefit to me,” said Spc. Brandon Plaisance, 82nd STB command driver and Luling, La. Native. “My first rollover experience was with a private during driver’s training. After we flipped, he completely lost it. He couldn’t even get out of his seatbelt; he was so panicked. It took us a couple minutes to finally get him out. If we had rolled over into a canal, we wouldn’t have made it.”
There are 56 HEATs across the United States, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army is moving towards focusing training on HEAT with ‘up-armored’ vehicles. “As an NCO in the Army, you look for things to improve your soldiers,” Hill said. “The fact that we played a part in creating training to help save lives downrange is great.”
| Date Taken: | 07.13.2012 |
| Date Posted: | 08.07.2012 15:11 |
| Story ID: | 92809 |
| Location: | FORT BRAGG, NORTH CAROLINA, US |
| Hometown: | ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, US |
| Hometown: | LULING, LOUISIANA, US |
| Hometown: | NEW YORK, NEW YORK, US |
| Hometown: | SPRINGFIELD, MISSOURI, US |
| Hometown: | WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, US |
| Web Views: | 141 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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