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Studies in gravity

by Jonn Lilyea••113

This has been going around social media circles for a day or so, so I brought it over here for the sociopaths. It’s a parachute drop of HMMVs for the 173rd Airborne Brigade at the US Army Garrison – Hohenfels, Germany posted to US Army WTF Moments. Gravity always wins (Language warning);

Foxtrot Alpha posts the end results;

Gravity+HMMV

A sobering thought; the same guys who rigged the equipment drop, also packed your parachute.

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113 thoughts on “Studies in gravity”

    2. What’s with that freaking retard laughing his ass off…doesn’t that A.H. pay taxes too? damn low I.Q. army pukes!!

      1. Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do but laugh. Had he reacted any other way, the results would have been the same.

  2. I wonder how much missing equipment was “on board” that HMMWV and will be deemed “lost due to parachute malfunction” on the resulting FLIPL (formerly Report of Survey)? (smile)

    1. Ah yes. My CW2 Property Book Officer in the 82nd was a happy man when we had several pallets streamer into a swamp (AND burn), during a SWIFT STRIKE. The survey officer said he understood why they streamered but not how the 130 ever got in the air what with all the crap that was supposedly on the pallets. Including, sheets, pillow cases… I thought it over reach to list a PCS metal desk but, what do I know?

      1. Heard of a similar incident involving a deuce-and-a-half in Germany that went “off roading” on a mountain highway. Reputedly there was no way in hell the truck could have held half what was “lost in the accident”. (smile)

        Best incident I ever knew of first-hand was not as impressive, but still wasn’t bad. A sister unit managed to run a generator out of oil, thus rather frying its engine. The motor sergeant managed to get that one turned in (can’t remember if it was to depot for repair or as unservicable/not economically repairable) w/o an investigation.

        When the CO asked him how, the motor sergeant politely told him, “Sir. Don’t ask. Just don’t ask.” The CO had the good sense not to ask any more questions. (smile)

        1. I had one of those as the S4 and didn’t get the story until my going away. Short a 1/4 trailer. Got the new M151’s (that’s how old I am) and had to turn the old ones in on main post Bragg. First trip the Supply Sgt realized the “fat ass civilian” wrote down the USA number and told them to go park it way the hell in the back…and he couldn’t see it from his chair which he was not going to unass. So next trip they towed a 1/4 trailer with a 3/4 ton truck. Drove it by the “fat ass civilian” who wrote the USA number. They then stuffed the trailer in the back of the 3/4 with canvas closed and drove to the motor pool. Old USA number blasted off and missing 1/4 USA number painted on and driven past the “fat ass civilian” with the paint still wet. No longer short a trailer.

          BTW: these events resulted in no loss to us taxpayers…the shortages were mostly stolen by a sister unit and used as bargaining material for other shortages. The missing trailer was somewhere on Bragg.

          1. Well, SJ, I’m glad to hear I’m not the only “really old” old soldier around here. I remember that M151 rollout as I was an RTO in a rifle company command section and sometimes driver for the old man. All drivers had to go to a familiarization course because the damned things had a propensity to roll over mostly due to the new independent suspension.

      3. As long as the metal desk wasn’t touching another piece of metal, I don’t see any problem with it.

  3. Gee whiz, it sure is nice to see my tax dollars at work. Yessiree, Bob. That is definitely an inspiration.

  5. Simple things amuse simple minds. Anyone who has ever been so thankful for supplies, weapons and ammo, food, mail, etc. dropped by chute out of necessity won’t find the gut laugh understandable.
    To me that was about as funny as a pay toilet in a diarrhea ward.

    1. Jarhead, I will pretty much guarantee you that the vast majority who ever served on jump status laugh at stuff like that – so long as no one was killed or seriously injured. It’s an example of “whistling while walking past the graveyard”.

      You laugh, because you know that, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

        2. …and I don’t have to clean it up or stay until o’dark thirty listing to the endless fukking AAR

        3. Hey, I may have run my deuce out of fuel on the second day of the ARTEP, but I didn’t pancake a HMMV!

          (Almost made it into the assembly area; fuel gage was not on empty.)

      3. There is a reason that the unofficial song of all Paratroopers is “Blood Upon the Risers” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWgsdexkv18 AKA ‘what a nelluva way to die’.

        As a paratrooper, if you don’t have a dark sense of humor you don’t have a sense of humor at all… It matches our black hearts

        “American parachutists — devils in baggy pants — are less than 100 meters from my outpost line. I can’t sleep at night; they pop up from nowhere and we never know when or how they will strike next. Seems like the black-hearted devils are everywhere…”

        1. And in keeping with that spirit, I’ll bet many of the Sky Soldiers are chalking that up as a successful bombing run.

      4. Hondo…You may or may not know Jack Shitt and family, but you DO know the real me. S/F

    2. sorry clicked the report comment

      If you cannot laugh at the absurd you see in the Military, you become a very bitter person.

    3. Better to do it wrong in an exercise where nobody gets hurt.

      I could laugh about it, if I was one of the people in a meeting talking knowledgeably about what needs to happen and when, and getting overruled by some fool.

      There is a line by one of the people on that video, claiming that he’d called it. Somebody knew there was a problem, ahead of time.

    1. Nothing wrong with the flying, it was the rigging that seemed deficient.

      One question I’ve heard asked is: Why was the 3rd load dropped? First load goes out, Hummer burns in and “Oh Crap, somebody’s going to be in trouble!”

      But when the 2nd one burned in, you would think the DZSO (Drop Zone Safety Officer for the non-airborne types, a jumpmaster on the ground who is usually in radio contact with the aircraft) would have halted the jump at that point since there seemed to be a problem.

      1. That is when the Bernath Factor kicked in. For those out of the loop, the Bernath Factor is when you have enough fuel to takeoff with a cargo bay full of vehicles, but you do not have enough fuel to land with a cargo bay full of vehicles.

        1. So who will Bernath file a lawsuit against? Obviously this accident is the fault of Yelp.

      3. Yeah, my thoughts also. If I was DZSO, I may have called the jump after the 1st one burned in. Definitely would have scrambled the panels after the second.

    2. Dullass probably did the rigging job… after downing three dozen Dutch Rudder “COCK”tails via rectal irrigation.

      1. Any airplane with loss of power is preferable to a helocopter ride with loss of power.

        1. As a guy who spent 6 years aboard ships that sunk on purpose, I cannot talk of ‘perfectly good airplanes’, having said that, I have heard that helicopters don’t actually fly, they are so ugly that the earth repels them.

          1. I’ve heard someone in the Army Aviation community refer to rotary-wing flight as “beating the air into submission”. (smile)

              1. Helo pilots always have a worried look because if something isn’t wrong now, it soon will be.

                The pucker factor is awesome when the MASTER CAUTION light goes on. Saw it once from the passenger compartment … luckily was a false alarm.

                1. Speaking as a Army aviation, if you are flying in a helicopter and see a hydraulic leak,,don’t worry. If the leak stops, that’s when you need to worry!

            2. I’m not a fan of helo inflight refueling. Nothing gets pucker factor higher than crew chief waking everyone up as a MH47 does a night inflight refueling. Something about that little badminton basket and rotor blades (did I mention the static electricity show at night) that gave me the willies! Night Stalkers made it look easy.

              https://youtu.be/nZiF-8-srsY

              1. I caught a ride from Bagram to Kabul with 160th once. Talk about an E ticket ride! I’ve never been so scared while feeling so safe all at the same time. Hard to explain.

        2. You might get an argument from former USAF F-104 or SR-71 pilots. Those two airframes reputedly would glide about as well as rocks. (smile)

          1. Got a story about that subject, Claw. Heard it direct from one of the parties involved, who was a friend of mine and a man I respected immensely.

            Seems he was working as an IP at Rucker one day and was instructing a foreign national student (European; can’t remember which country). That day’s instruction was autorotation procedures. (I’m not an aviator, so pardon me if I don’t relate this incident technically correctly.)

            They took the bird up to altitude and to the designated area; the student was to perform a simulated autorotation. At that point, they lost power to the main rotors – for real. Luckily the rotors were intact and still free to rotate.

            My friend at that point then told the foreign student: “Captain, this is the Real McCoy. I’ll take over now.” He then took the controls and autorotated the bird down safely.

            They called in, and were awaiting recovery. While waiting, the foreign officer looked at my friend and asked, “So, tell me – what does this phrase ‘Real McCoy’ mean?”

            Until my friend filled him in, apparently the guy had no idea that he’d just been through an actual in-flight emergency.

            No word on whether he needed new skivvies after my friend filled him in. (smile)

            2. In Nam we used vertical autorotation for tight hot LZ alot. Coming slow and slow makes your helo a great big target. There is the spiral AR. For Grunts the first they are in a spiral AR, I have seen some very worried and sometimes I would put on a scared face. Some day , I will tell about causing a ROK General to lose because of his Chaplain. Joe

              1. Always hated it when you pilots would stare forward and at a certain time, look at each other and then, dramatically, shrug your shoulders to each other. That did not instill confidence in your pax.

      1. Or a C-123. Or a C-130A model whose airframe was likely 30 years old at the time. (smile)

        1. Flying into Kabul on a C130 when they popped off one of their flares made my asshole pucker. Even after landing it took me at least ten extra minutes to pull the seat webbing out of my ass!

          1. Similar experience here – except over Baghdad on a CH-47 at relatively low altitude.

            Gets yer freakin’ attention bigtime. (smile)

      2. Roger that. What a pig that was (at least when they were older). I was in the right seat on one over Bangor, Maine (ROTC summer camp orientation flight). Pilot had me at the controls and told me to bring her around. Cranked the wheel left, nothing happened. Cranked a little more, nothing. Pilot looks over at me and said, “Wait for it.” Eventually the right wing came up and we started around. We may have crossed the New Hampshire border before that thing finally went through all 180 degrees.

  10. Maybe these vehicles were shit and there was a thought the best way to force getting a replacement was to “lose” them….

    Or just some good old fashioned bad luck…I guess…I mean 3 times in a row could just be a sad coincidence…

    1. That is unprecedented in my experience- you rarely see a parachute fail, but if you notice, these parachutes opened but the vehicle came off the platform.

      Someone really screwed this up big time, three times in a row, and it was almost definitely the Army riggers.

      It’s funny, but it is also incredibly dangerous. It’s hard to tell from the ground, but an object exiting an aircraft has the same forward velocity as the aircraft until air resistance and the parachute slows it- thus the opening shock.

      So, given just a little less luck, these vehicles could have separated from the platform on the ramp or they could have been thrown forward much more.

      There is an older video of a Sheridan tank being LAPESd out of a C130- look it up and you’ll see what I mean

      1. Caveat- for personnel drops I have seen a number of partial malfunctions (parachute partly opens), and experienced one personally. On a partial, the parachute streamers, rolls, inverts, or ‘Mae Wests’, and at least slows your descent and keeps you stable so you can deploy your reserve.

        You rarely see a complete malfunction (parachute doesn’t open at all).

        One complete malfunction. The troopers static line severed, so his parachute came out of the pack tray but did not open. He counted four thousand, felt a shock (static line snapping), and failed to check his canopy. It took two or three seconds for him to realize what was going on, and at 800 feet that is two seconds too long. He never deployed his reserve.

        I’ve never seen a cargo parachute fail to open, and I’ve never seen anything like this. Usually,, a heavy drop failure is when the parachute oscillates heavily and comes down inverted or just lands heavily, in trees, or on top of another load.

        The closest thing I’ve seen to this was when the JM pushed out a door bundle without hooking it up. Scary because we on the ground thought it was a trooper.

      2. Not sure it’s just the riggers. We were detailed as heavy drop rig site labor on many an EDRE. Could be that there was just not enough inspections done or whatnots because those trucks came off the pallets.

        Maybe ballast was wrong and they flipped off?

        1. Well, the support detail may have screwed it up, but the riggers are ultimately responsible for inspecting everything

  16. “Hey, do we need to call that up?” as phone starts ringing.

    Ummmm, yeah, a little late for that.

    #whatwouldchipnasado?

    1. I have to say, while the video is funny, posting it was probably not the smartest thing to do, as least right away. I’m sure that if any of the brass is watching it, they are probably not too amused about someone not stopping the drop after the first vehicle felt the effects of gravity at the drop zone.

        1. Neat video. Never did a C17 since I’m a dinosaur. Comments: that seems hairy having the vehicles extracted right in front of the sticks! Maybe we did it in 130’s but I don’t remember that. Do they not tailgate 117’s? No more slapping the doors on exit? They closed the troop door quick…what happens to the static lines? Or maybe the video cut out their being pulled? Thanks again for the video.

          1. SJ: They stopped slapping the doors on the C-130 when I was still in. There is a wind deflector that deploys on the forward side of the jump door that makes doing the “up and out” unnecessary. Instead the first jumper hands his static line to the safety and stands at a 45 degree angle with both hands on the ends of the reserve until the JM give to “GO!” command, and then he walks right off the ramp.

            C-17’s and C-141s do not allow for troop ramp jumps, they are door only. AFAIK the only ramp jumps anymore are C-130’s or CH-47s.

            Never jumped a C-17 although I’ve flown in a couple before I retired in ’05.

            1. Well, you still slap the door with your head if you have a bad exit…

              The C-17 is an amazing jump- you have all sorts of room compared to the C-141. I jumped a C-130 chasing a platform of the ramp, and it is much tighter. Ramp jumps are usually kind of cool, this was very scary.

              Door exits are much safer for a real Mass-Tac jump; with a lot of jumpers the risk of collisions and entanglements gets too high.

              Interestingly, you can only put 100 guys out, compared to 120 on a C-141 (packed tight

              BTW, this answers the question ‘why don’t the troopers jump BEFORE the heavy drop?”

              No matter how you look at this, there are a few riggers standing at Parade Rest waiting to see the battalion commander…

              2. I loved C-130 ramp jumps! My old detachment commander always referred to the view you got when the ramp opened (during a daylight jump, obviously) as “The big-screen TV.”

                We used to do a lot of ramp jumps at Bragg as that was supposed to be USASOC SOP (I was in 3/3 SFG.)

                82nd and XVIII Corps guys liked to straphang on our jumps if they could because they never got to do ramp jumps, theirs were always mass tacs at 800′ with T-10s. We jumped MC-1C’s that had low-porosity canopies and the landing was feather-light compared to the beating you’d take with a T-10.

                1. Tru dat.

                  My first 30 jumps after jump school were N/MT/CE out the door at 800 feet AGL with one to six hundred of my closest friends with the whole airplane emptying in about a minute.

                  I didn’t know any other way until I left Division. Helo and ramp jumps were for Corps staff, separate brigades, and Group.

                2. In the 82nd we used to get you Guys showing up as jumpmasters to get the large scale mass tack jumps needed to complete the Master Parachutist qualifications. Nothing wrong with that but was fun seeing the culture shock between “your way and our way”.

      2. have to say, while the video is funny, posting it was probably not the smartest thing to do, as least right away. I’m sure that if any of the brass is watching it, they are probably not too amused about someone not stopping the drop after the first vehicle felt the effects of gravity at the drop zone.

        Since the video was taken at Hohenfels (a large maneuver training area in Germany Southeast of Nuremberg) I would guess the people taking the video were part of a Range Control detail. They were probably told to “stay out of the way and let the professionals do the work” so I doubt they’ll be in any trouble.

        Don’t get me wrong, asses WILL fry but it won’t be the soldiers who took the video unless there’s some sort of blanket prohibition on posting videos of training operations from that post.

        1. When the first vehicle burned in, one of the people watching yelled “Called It!” They seemed to have expected this. Did these people just think this was an ate up unit or would there have been a reason for them to know?

    2. Laughs my ass off.
      As a USAF Aerial porter and at least NON-RIGGER, I am SO Glad, Having worked at Pope Green Ramp with 3rd MAPS, My Name wasn’t on the Parachute Rigger Signature and Certificate number on the load tag.
      I’m sure someone was saying on that third load…..
      “please oh please burn up the load doc tags”, But still at home port, they *HAVE* to have known who the riggers were.
      😀

  17. I had the pleasure of watching a full water buffalo come unhooked from a CH-47 once. Hit the ground on the wheels, shot a column of water from the hatch about 200′ high. Very entertaining!

  18. Shit happens. Seen many heavy drop go bad. Landed in diesel from a burst fuel bladder on Sicily DZ.
    Always an interesting time to be had in the Airborne.

    1. Does it ever. I jumped in as part of the lead party in Turkey back in the early ’60’s and before we could even get our chutes rolled up a flight of 130’s appeared at the forward edge of the drop zone, followed by more. Within seconds we were looking straight up at a heavy drop and running for our lives as those huge shadows swooped past us and those heavy platforms slammed into the ground way too close for comfort.

      Not an experience I ever cared to repeat.

  19. I like that laughing boy gets serious when one of the rubble heats begins to burn. He says, “Hey, do we need to call that up?”

    The first fail was an “Oh shit” moment and laughter is understandable. The second was an “Oh shit” moment that would get my attention and have me worried. The third was an “Oh shit” moment that would have me heading for the hills.

    1. I believe the “do we need to call that up?” referred to the fire that apparently started when the 3rd vehicle burned in.

      The DZSO would almost certainly have already been on the radio reporting the two previous burn-ins but as others have said, this is a train with a LOT of moving parts and it’s not that easy to stop once it gets in motion. 😉

  20. So does someone need to do a PMCS on the remains and fill out a DA 2404 on them before they get turned in? I can’t imagine the number of X’s they’d end up putting on it…. /sarc

  21. I loved watching the old Sheridan’s burn in on Sicily D.Z. The first question was always is the Air Force gonna pay for it? And what troop gets to wright up the 2404?

    1. I was in the stands at Sicily Drop Zone watching this LAPES as part of a CAPEX in 87. The crash killed 3 onboard the aircraft and 1 soldier who was parked in the woodline in a jeep watching the CAPEX.

      https://youtu.be/b4L50eMI8gY

      1. The officers driver told him it was a bad idea to park in that spot. And went to the safety of the tree line with other spectators. A true story.

  24. I’m enjoying this thread (not only because it is mostly Bernasty free) but because it shows how we have served over the decades and how much bonds us together. Things have changed but the core ethos has not. Our no-shit stories have a common thread. My last jump was in a 123, I think, but with a little refresher I could probably do a 17 and not kill myself or anyone else. Thanks folks.

  25. They dropped a water blivet on our tiny drop zone, from 1500′. As soon as the drogue chutes deployed and gave an initial tug to get the pallet moving….the anchor snapped off.

    The 300mph water balloon easily overshot the drop, hit the paved main access road, and detonated like any other 500lb bomb weighing 2 tons….thunderously, and shaking the ground for hundreds of meters around.

    The road was not only cut, but hydraulically dug out about 20′.

    1. Just out of my own dumbshit curiosity, how many gallons does a water blivet hold? Sounds like one hell of an impact.

      1. Pretty sure they’re at least 500 gal, API – I’ve seen references to a 500 gallon blivet for water. There may be larger versions.

        Even so, at 8.64lb/gallon, 500 gallons of water is somewhat over 4,300lbs. Yeah, that can leave a mark. (smile)

  26. As a former Navy Rigger all I can say is this is going to look bad on someones next quarterly marks.

  29. this is what happens when the E-4 Mafia decides to skip PCMS and fail to properly fill out the DA-2106….

    –

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