The Jump Towers

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

Another little tale from Jump School, those wasted fun-filled days of my misbegotten youth.

During "Tower Week" (the second of the three formal weeks of training in Jump School in those days, it may have changed since) you had to make two drops from the 250 foot towers. These towers operate by raising a parachute with harness up to 250 feet, and then releasing it (in simple terms). The parachute is open and held by a clamp in its middle and by rings around its circumference. When the release is thrown (by a man on the ground) the parachute simply floats to the ground. The object here is that the soldier suspended in the harness under the parachute gets an opportunity to practice landing by parachute under a "real parachute" rather than simply jumping from a four foot platform or being dropped from a swing trainer.

I spent most of my time around the jump tower doing parachute recovery. This was a good deal, as the black hats (jump instructors) would not bother the people on parachute recovery (at least as long as we moved quickly about our tasks), but would frequently have the students waiting their turn to "drop" doing all sorts of things (mostly involving exertion and sweat). When the time came for me to do my drops, I wound up doing them "back to back", i.e., I did one, changed harness, and did the other.

The first drop was in a modified Dash One (-1) parachute. This parachute has large openings on the back end so that air spills out of it in that direction, imparting forward motion to the parachute. The modification is that it has the connector and those rings around the outside to it can be attached to the tower. My very first drop.

I came down light and easy, and had no trouble executing a perfect (well, "satisfactory" as the Black Hats graded them) parachute landing fall. All fear and concern that I would not know what I was doing was gone. Why did I need to even do the second drop? You make two drops from the 250 tower, and if either one of them is satisfactory, you pass (yes, 50% was a pass). If you bomb both . . . let's not go there.

In any case, I had made my one, why did I have to do it again at all?

Well, they put me in a modified T-10. Now the T-10 has three modifications for use on the tower. It has that connecting link, those rings, and the outer most circumference of material has been removed so the parachute is somewhat smaller in diameter than normal.

Now, if you are a thinking person, you have probably guessed that smaller parachute equals faster descent.

I did not make that connection.

My second ever parachute landing fall had the five required points of contact, it is just that instead of Toes, Heels, Calf, Thigh, and pushup muscle, it was toes, heel, kneecaps, elbows, head (thank goodness for that steel helmet).

It was a valuable lesson that I took with me, and if I had ever had to pull a reserve parachute after my main had failed, I would be prepared for the rougher landing.