{"id":34743,"date":"2013-03-25T14:25:18","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T18:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=34743"},"modified":"2013-03-25T14:25:31","modified_gmt":"2013-03-25T18:25:31","slug":"green-ramp-tragedy-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=34743","title":{"rendered":"Green Ramp tragedy anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"

On March 23, 1994, 24 paratroopers died and more than 100 were injured. 19 of the dead were from the 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. the accident happened on the world-famous “Green Ramp” at Fort Bragg while the paratroopers were waiting for a routine parachute jump when a F-16D Fighting Falcon collided with a C-130E Hercules cargo plane. From the Fayetteville Observer<\/a>;<\/p>\n

[Keith] Masback and the other soldiers in the jumpmaster school were just outside the path of the blast, shielded by a building, according to investigators’ diagrams of the crash site.<\/p>\n

“Of course, I heard it and felt the fireball on the back of my neck,” said Masback, then a captain with the 525th Military Intelligence Brigade working in the 18th Airborne Corps headquarters.<\/p>\n

“It all just kind of happened very quickly. We hit the ground and most of us crawled into our building,” Masback said, describing the confusion that day. “We had no context . to be standing on a beautiful March day and for it to turn hellacious.”<\/p>\n

Masback remembers the carnage – burning trees and burning men, blood, debris and body parts.<\/p>\n

Despite the destruction, Masback, now president of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation in Washington, D.C., said the response of those around him is what stands out most.<\/p>\n

“We all just reacted,” he said. “It was a horrific day, but it was a great day to be a paratrooper because of the way we all responded.”<\/p>\n

Soldiers who escaped injury tended to those in need, Masback said. Wounded soldiers turned to help those with more severe injuries, even as ammunition from the fighter jet burned off.<\/p>\n

“It was overwhelming,” he said. “Everywhere I turned, there were lifeless and injured bodies. Those not debilitated were aiding those that were.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another reminder that training is just as deadly as combat operations sometimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On March 23, 1994, 24 paratroopers died and more than 100 were injured. 19 of the … Green Ramp tragedy anniversary<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}