Training Can Be Deadly

There was a helicopter crash here on Post the other day. The memorial service for the 2 pilots who died is today. They weren't based here and were actually from Ft Campbell, but they train very closely with the 75th down here all the time so they had many friends. One of them was actually from a small town not far from here. So they are doing a ceremony here for those who won't be able to attend the official ones at Campbell.

I had just talked to my mom the other day about my lack of love for helicopters. I dislike them. A lot. I'm not a huge fan of when Matt jumps but I literally have panic attacks when he jumps a chinook or huey. I can't watch them at all. I will never get into a helicopter. They just make me nervous. I remember Matt's last deployment, he spent the last 12 weeks or so as the CSM's driver. It was supposed to be a reward for being so awesome through the deployment. A little rest and a desk job in a/c for the last couple months. Matt absolutely hated it. He was bored out of his mind. Except when the CSM would visit different bases and camps around the area to see how things were going. He did this about once a month. Matt, being his driver (which is really his personal assistant) would have to go with him. Because these bases and camps were quite small they would have to take helicopters. No runways for big planes. Ugh. I hated when I'd get an email saying he'd be gone for a couple days so don't worry if I didn't hear from him. I knew that meant that he was going to be flying around in one.

There have been a few training related accidents around here the last couple months. We had the helicopter crash, a soldier was killed at the range, one died on a jump (another died just a couple days before at Bragg which was also a particular hit to our shop) and we had a heat stroke that was fatal on Post too.

You almost forget. I mean, when Matt is deployed he could die any minute of any day. Thats the mind set. You know it dangerous and its life and death. But when they are home, you forget about all that stuff. You completely take for granted the going to work in the morning and the coming home in time for dinner at night (most nights) But they are doing their job during the day just as they would out there. In more controlled settings I'll grant you, but you can only control so much when using real bullets and flying real helicopters. We forget that training to go do the dangerous stuff, is just as dangerous. I would lose my mind if Matt died in combat. But I can't even imagine the emotions I would have to deal with if he lost his life during a training excersise. The anger and confusion that must go with that would be insurmountable.

The whole reason this is on my mind is because yesterday Matt come home and told me he has a jump next Thursday. Why, I'm not sure because he just jumped before we went home in June and he's good until the end of the year. But for whatever reason they put him on the manifest. Then he tells me that he's jumping a T-11 parachute. My stomach churned.

These are the newest, latest and greatest parachute the Army has designed. And they suck and are horrible. Basically the Army sunk so much money into the design that they can't afford to scrap it and start all over again. Even though the Riggers all over the world are telling them they should. This is the one that killed the soldier at Bragg. The old parachutes take 4 seconds to open. So if you hit that and no chute, you know to pull the reserve which takes roughly 2 seconds to open. You have roughly 10 seconds from time out of the plane to ass on the ground. So you have 4 seconds of reaction time if your main doesn't open. The new T-11 takes 6 seconds to open but their reserves take 4 seconds. That gives you no time to react. Which is how the soldier at Bragg died. He knew his chute didn't open, he pulled his reserve but he knew it wouldn't be open in time. You can hear him say it on the malfunctions tape. I know because Matt had to watch it over a dozen times after it happened. They call it jumper error. Meaning that there was nothing wrong with the parachute or the way it was packed. That it was the slow reaction of the jumper that caused his death. How do you react quickly when you have an admitted 0 seconds to react?

Here at Benning they jump with a little more altitude because its the Airborne school. The students need to have a little extra time to react and learn to steer and it gives them a bit of a softer landing. So when he jumps on Thursday he'll have that extra 2-3 seconds he'll need if something goes wrong, but it terrifies me to think about it if we get moved to Bragg. Talk about crazy.