Leap of Faith : Part Deaux

[Utah Bob #35998]

Leap of Faith

Part deaux

 

 

The US Army had no paratroops until July of 1940 when the Parachute Test Platoon was formed. The Germans had already used airborne troops against Holland in May and we were playing catch up. The training and build up went quickly and before long we had a new breed of soldier. A volunteer who was willing to intentionally jump out of an airplane in flight, behind enemy lines without any chance of immediate re-enforcement. The guys in the Alamo would have made great paratroopers.

 

Somewhere along the line a paratrooper song surfaced. “Blood on the Risers”(The risers are the straps attaching the parachute harness to the canopy via the suspension lines. Suspension lines are also called shroud lines. Paratroops have a dark sense of humor. Sung to the tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, all paratroopers are required to learn it. And they will sing it with gusto at the drop of a hat, especially when drunk and if there are any Legs around (A Leg is a non-airborne qualified soldier. They wear straight legged trousers on their dress uniforms and low shoes. Paratroopers tuck their trouser legs in the tops of their boots and thus do not have straight legs)

The song is a cautionary tale of what can happen if you make a mistake. Like not attaching your static line to the cable before you jump.

 

The song begins:

He was just a rookie trooper and he surely shook with fright

He checked all his equipment and made sure his pack was tight

But he had to sit and listen to those awful engines roar...

“You ain't gonna jump no more”

 

The chorus is
Gory, Gory what a helluva way to die

Gory, Gory what a helluva way to die

Gory, Gory what a helluva way to die

And he ain't gonna jump no more

 

Gets your attention doesn't it?

It gets worse.

 

So on my first foray into the clouds, I don't know if I exactly shook with fright but I was perhaps a bit anxious and apprehensive. Full of adrenalin.

 

As I stated, we all checked our equipment etc and then began to exit the aircraft. Shuffling down the isle of the plane, harness straps pulled tight up into our crotches, like an old, arthritic flight attendant making that final boarding check. Not that they have any of those, but you get the image.

 

The door loomed closer and the second stanza of our airborne hymn flared up in my mind:

“Is everybody happy” said the Sargent looking up

Our hero faithfully answered, Yes and then they stood him up

He jumped into the icy blast, his static line unhooked

And he ain't gonna jump no more”

 

I looked and tugged on my static line hook, making sure it was firmly attached to the cable. All okay.

 

 

The reason for this preamble us to get us back to where I left off in Part One. I got to the door took up the position and the Jumpmaster said, “GO”. It happened faster than I can tell it.

And Go I did.

I'm not sure if he also tapped me on the shoulder, kicked me or grabbed me and physically chucked me out of the plane. I think I just went. We had been practicing jumping out a door for days and days and it became automatic. When you heard, “GO” you jumped straight out, pushing yourself with your hands just outside the edge of the door and bringing them immediately to grasp each side of your reserve chute. I wondered what would happen if in years hence I was on a subway and somebody yelled, “GO” as we approached the station before the train stopped.

 

This brings us to the “ICY BLAST” phrasevin the song.

Either they neglected to mention or maybe I dozed off briefly in training,, exactly what was going to happen immediately upon leaving the friendly confines of the airplane. You remember when you were a kid in your dad's car and he's driving along at 50mph and you stick your hand out the window and make it act like a bird or airplane surfing the wind? And if he went 65 you'd pull your hand back in because, crap, that's fast?

Well, imaging if he was going a hundred and you stuck your hand out.

The old C-47, as I recall, would normally cruise at about 115-120 mph. They would throttle back a bit to about a hundred when dropping troops. Much slower and they'd become a bus rather than an airplane. As a point of reference, Tropical Storm force winds are 49 mph. Hurricane level is 74. So we're going about a hundred. Strong Category 1 Hurricane force wind.

 

And I jump right out into it.

This was quite a surprise to me. Now I have, in years since, been in tropical and hurricane force winds on the ground. Those are what you call really *##:;”%* strong winds!

We were taught to count to four upon leaving the aircraft thusly:

One-one thousand

Two-one thousand

Three-one thousand

Four-one thousand

 

This is the time it takes for your chute to fully deploy, about four seconds. Upon reaching four, you grab the riser straps running up from your shoulders and lean your head back.

What you are supposed to see is a fully inflated canopy billowing under clear blue skies (or stars if it's a night jump).

But luckily I found that my full-throated scream also lasted about four seconds. This eliminated the need for me to remember to count after being hit with a sudden 100mph icy gust accompanied by booming radial engine noise.. Just scream, then open your eyes, and check your canopy. In truth the gust wasn't icy like in the song. It was Georgia in September. I subsequently had the opportunity to experience serious icy blasts in subsequent jumps...but that's another story.

So I opened my eyes after the near religious experience of being hit by a hurricane, grabbed my risers and tilted my head back to make sure there was a parachute above me. But my head wouldn'd go back. “Crap”, I thought, “I broke my damn neck. No more jumping for me”. The sound of the airplane engines faded rapidly and I tried again to look up. My neck wasn't broken. The prop blast had spun me around several times as mu canopy was deploying ending up with the lines twisted behind my head. In severe cases this is what's called a Streamer. The chute just follows you down like the tail of a kite. You end up being the first guy on the ground. Even if you jumped last.

Fortunately I only had a few twists and as I twisted in the wind everything corrected itself.

The for a few seconds I was a bird. No sensation of falling. Just floating in the hot Georgia sunshine. Not a care in the world. “And they're paying me to do this?”, I thought.

 

Then I realized that regardless of my euphoria, I was indeed falling. I looked down and could see Mother Earth waiting to welcome me. Whether it was with open arms or a baseball bat would become clear very quickly.

I tried to remember what to do. Something they hammered into our heads. It was an abbreviation.

MPH? No

BVDs? NO

XXX? Close but no.

PLF?? Yeah that's it ….a Parachute Landing Fall. I had practiced the position a hundred times or more over the past two weeks. Feet and knees together. Toes pointed down. Look at the horizon, not the ground. Well two out of three. I couldn't stop staring at that ground rapidly approaching. On the drop zone, there were instructors with bull horns shouting directions like, “Don't look at the horizon, idiot, Slip left” or “Slip right”. You could actually make some small corrections in your direction by pulling on the risers. But it also spilled air out of the canopy and caused you to drop much faster so you shouldn't do it if you are below about 200 feet.

 

Now there's a trick to doing a PLF. The trick is kind of like judo. You use the opponents momentum against him. The massive planet approaching has a lot of momentum. Ideally, you hit first with the balls of your feet (lovingly and firmly encased in your expensive spit-shined, PX-purchased Corcoran jump boots), then depending on which way you are drifting with the wind you fall so your calf hits next, Then your thigh. Then your side and shoulder. Basically forming a rolling “C” with your body. Tres acrobatic. This sequence absorbs much of the shock of hitting the ground.

Much, not all.

 

The old T-10 parachute we used was developed in the 1950s. It was basically a WW2 upgrade; slightly bigger. Unlike the modern fancypants sky divers who float into the ball park in their colored jumpsuits and land standing up, smiling and waving, holding the game ball to give to whatever celebrity is throwing out the first pitch. No. The old T-10 let you down with the approximate speed of jumping off about a 12 foot roof, depending on if it was a hot or cold day. You had to do that PLF thing or it would be painful. Well...more painful. If you had your legs apart, most probably whichever one hit first would break, and maybe the knee and ankle too, followed by the hip possibly....and a rib or two

I was absolutely determined to keep my feet and knees together tighter. At about 75 feet above the ground I slammed them together three or four times just to make sure. I pointed my toes down and....

They hit first, just as planned.

Then my ass. Ow!

Then my spine. Dammit!

Then the back of my head. Crap!

 

I lay there dazed for a few seconds looking up at the blue sky from whence I had descended. I took stock. Wiggled fingers and toes, rolled over and stood up. Nothing was broken! As I grabbed the shroud lines and spilled the remaining air out of the canopy, and wrapped it up, the last stanzas of Blood on the Risers once again sounded in my brain.

 

“He hit the ground, the sound was SPLAT. The blood went spurting high.

His comrades they were heard to say “A helluva way to die”

He lay there rolling round in the welter of his gore

And he aint gonna jump no more

 

There was blood upon the risers. There was brains upon the chute.

Intestines were a dangling from his paratrooper suit.

They picked him up and poured him from his paratrooper boots

And he ain't gonna jump no more”

 

“Hah!”, I thought, “Not today. Four more jumps and I get my wings!”

But that's another story.

 

 

 

[Subdeacon Joe]

13 hours ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

PLF?? Yeah that's it ….a Parachute Landing Fall.

 

Thanks, Bob.  You have a great way with words.

 

Back in my college days I majored in geology.  One of the professors had been a paratrooper.  On one two week intersession field class down at Anza-Borrego he demonstrated the PLF off of one of the structures over the picnic tables in the campsite.  Then he started teaching it to us, first off of the tables, then stacked tables, the the top of the structure.  

Being young, foolish, and a bit drunk, most of us gave it a go.  


ADDED:

This "training" did come in useful for a few of us, turning what could have been a nasty landing from a slip or fall into something controlled.  Like the time I was running down hill to get away from a swarm of yellow jackets and was suddenly faced with a road cut.

 

[Charlie Harley, #14153]

9 hours ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

 

Thanks, Bob.  You have a great way with words.

 

Back in my college days I majored in geology.  One of the professors had been a paratrooper.  On one two week intersession field class down at Anza-Borrego he demonstrated the PLF off of one of the structures over the picnic tables in the campsite.  Then he started teaching it to us, first off of the tables, then stacked tables, the the top of the structure.  

Being young, foolish, and a bit drunk, most of us gave it a go.  

The only time I was ever escorted from a bar was out of the O-Club at Fort Rucker.  I’d just earned my jump wings and after sufficient prodding from my fellow drunk knuckleheads, started doing PLFs from the seating area onto the dance floor.

[Charlie Harley, #14153]

Good times, UB!

 

[Pat Riot]

Thanks UB. I never knew that one hit the ground as of jumping from 12 feet with those chutes. I have jumped from 12 or more feet a couple of times (dumb kid stunts) and it’s quite an impact. This explains why so many Airborne vets have ongoing trauma injuries from jumping when in the military.

 

Are the latest chutes they use any more forgiving?

[Alpo]

I was reading about "paracord" (which I've always called "shroud line", and, maybe ten years ago, heard called "550 cord").

 

The article says it's not used any more, as it stretches. With the old round parachutes, stretch was not only acceptable, but required.

 

But with the new rectangular steerable chutes, the cords must stay the length they started as.

[Utah Bob #35998]

1 hour ago, Pat Riot, SASS #13748 said:

Thanks UB. I never knew that one hit the ground as of jumping from 12 feet with those chutes. I have jumped from 12 or more feet a couple of times (dumb kid stunts) and it’s quite an impact. This explains why so many Airborne vets have ongoing trauma injuries from jumping when in the military.

 

Are the latest chutes they use any more forgiving?

Newer chutes are a different material. The old thin nylon canopies were more breathable. That meant that some air passed through them, increasing your rate of descent. So it's a much slower drop with the new material and design of the chutes these days.

 

[Pulp, SASS#28319]

My cousin’s husband was a Ranger.  Did two combat jumps in Korea.  I’m not sure of the numbers now, but he learned using the T-7 chute, and bragged about how much easier the T-10 was upon opening.  The T-7 would nearly bring you to a dead stop when it popped open.  Opening was worse than landing according to him.  Well, landing under a functional chute anyway.

[Utah Bob #35998]

38 minutes ago, Pulp, SASS#28319 said:

My cousin’s husband was a Ranger.  Did two combat jumps in Korea.  I’m not sure of the numbers now, but he learned using the T-7 chute, and bragged about how much easier the T-10 was upon opening.  The T-7 would nearly bring you to a dead stop when it popped open.  Opening was worse than landing according to him.  Well, landing under a functional chute anyway.

Opening, especially at excessive aircraft speeds, can raise your voice several octaves. If you get my drift. 

[Old Top]

The Older chutes were packed and the parachute deployed first and inflating first leaving you to travel about thirty feet to a stop, called opening shock and will remove fillings if you are not ready for it.  The T-10 used a deployment bag that the chute was stuffed into and the lines were laced on the outside of the bag and pulled out as you fall, then releasing the chute out of the bag, no abrupt stops, reserve chutes are still canopy first then lines, but if you need your reserve you do not mind the shock.  An object falls at 120 ft per second a T-10 falls at 20 ft per second with a fully loaded paratroop.  The type of plane enters in to this also, as Utah Bob has stated we were trained to jump straight out with gusto, this worked on the 119's, C-130's was a very frightening thing on a C-47 as standing in the door you look down on the tail which you are sure will cut you in half, they give you an extra 10 ft of static line so you will not bang on it if something goes wrong.  The first time I jumped a C-141 I used the exit strategy I was taught, well the other planes are props an the 141 is a jet, they provide a spoiler just in front of the door to deflect the jet blast away, and a hop was all the was required, needless to say my training took over and I made my normal mode of jumping when my head stopped rotating around I, as has been explained by UB, looked up to check my canopy and saw the ground I then looked down to check the ground and saw my canopy, thinking this could not be right I checked them again still the same.  It finally dawned on me I was going down for a head first landing, this is not a good thing, it may result in a broken neck and a slight case of dead.  With a great deal of concentration I checked things out and determined my foot was caught in the risers, with a large amount of kicking I freed myself, the jet blast had turned me around through my risers so I had no control to turn into the wind and it had a small amount of wind that day, so I faced it and did what I could, looked at the horizon and got into a PLF position, it was a perfect landing feet, head and butt.  I was down and safe well not quite as the wind was picking up and dragging me across the DZ, I finally got the risers twisted around enough to hit the canopy release.  I finally stopped moving, the wind had drug me about  a half mile from the trucks that were the pick up point, so get up get the chute, reserve and equipment gathered up and start hiking.  Another fun filled day in the Airborne.

 

Old Top

who used to be a parachute rigger 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

My cousin's greatest disappointment in his entire lifetime was when he broke his heel on his first landing and was washed out of the program as a result.

[Alpo]

This brought forth a chuckle.

 

I am rereading the Casca books. Barry Saddler. Casca uses many names through the centuries, and in this one he's Casey Romaine.

 

>All at once, Casey felt the exhilaration he'd experienced in so many previous jumps and silently laughed at the awareness of how one always felt the need to piss after he'd harnessed up. It was no different now, but there was no time.<

 

From part one.

>Either many things run through your mind or nothing at all. I don't remember what I was thinking. Probably, “I really need to pee”<

[Imis Twohofon,SASS # 46646]

And I thought that a jump from the back deck of a tank was a thrill.

 

Imis

[Utah Bob #35998]

21 minutes ago, Imis Twohofon,SASS # 46646 said:

And I thought that a jump from the back deck of a tank was a thrill.

 

Imis

Try it when it’s in reverse. Major adrenalin rush. 

For a few seconds anyway. 

[Cheyenne Ranger, 48747L]

some of mine were more PLC than PLF

 

 

(C is for Crash)

[Eyesa Horg]

All I can say is "Thank you" guys for your service. You certainly must have large ones! They way you told us the story was enthralling. Thanks.

[Charlie Harley, #14153]

On 7/7/2019 at 8:55 AM, Alpo said:

This brought forth a chuckle.

 

I am rereading the Casca books. Barry Saddler. Casca uses many names through the centuries, and in this one he's Casey Romaine.

 

>All at once, Casey felt the exhilaration he'd experienced in so many previous jumps and silently laughed at the awareness of how one always felt the need to piss after he'd harnessed up. It was no different now, but there was no time.<

 

From part one.

>Either many things run through your mind or nothing at all. I don't remember what I was thinking. Probably, “I really need to pee”<

On our first day of jump week, we “shuffled” to the airfield and got all rigged up, only to have bad weather roll through and delay us by four hours. 

 

As as you can guess, coffee did what it does, and somebody asked Sergeant Airborne if he could use the latrine. That dictated removal and re-donning of the rig plus reinspection by the Jumpmaster, along with substantial abuse by the Black Hats. 

 

From that moment until jump time, more than one soldier opted to forgo a bio-break. The woodland camo pattern in our BDUs hid a lot of sins that morning. 

[Utah Bob #35998]

5 hours ago, Charlie Harley, #14153 said:

On our first day of jump week, we “shuffled” to the airfield and got all rigged up, only to have bad weather roll through and delay us by four hours. 

 

As as you can guess, coffee did what it does, and somebody asked Sergeant Airborne if he could use the latrine. That dictated removal and re-donning of the rig plus reinspection by the Jumpmaster, along with substantial abuse by the Black Hats. 

 

From that moment until jump time, more than one soldier opted to forgo a bio-break. The woodland camo pattern in our BDUs hid a lot of sins that morning. 

No way to conceal the indiscretion with the old OG107s.

[Old Top]

You beat me to it Bob.