{"id":54314,"date":"2014-08-02T09:00:52","date_gmt":"2014-08-02T13:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=54314"},"modified":"2014-08-01T15:34:12","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T19:34:12","slug":"colonel-darron-wright-pride-goes-before-the-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=54314","title":{"rendered":"Colonel Darron Wright; pride goes before the fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

The News Tribune<\/a> reports on the investigation of the death of Colonel Darron Wright when he was making a parachute jump in North Carolina last September. <\/p>\n

Apparently, Wright had just rejoined the XVIIIth Airborne Corps after a tour with a Stryker Brigade at Joint Base Lewis McCord. They say that he had more than 60 jumps under his belt. But, he was jumping the MC-6 parachute that he had never used before. When he arrived two hours late for pre-jump training, the jump master just assumed that him and his officer-mates didn’t need to go through pre-jump. For the uninitiated, pre-jump is a quick refresher on exiting the aircraft, parachute landing falls and safety procedures for things that might happen in the air. <\/p>\n

I’ve never used (or even heard of until today) the MC-6 parachute, but I guess a trooper needs to jump from 1200 feet for it to open safely, but no one bothered to tell the pilot who put the troops out at 1000 feet. That along with a series of other events, including skipping pre-jump led to the colonel’s death;<\/p>\n

[Accident investigator Brigadier General Christopher] Cavoli wrote that Wright \u201cshould not have been able to get on the manifest\u201d for the jump because his certification from his refresher courses had expired.<\/p>\n

He also found that none of the soldiers should have been able to use the MC-6 parachutes without written permission from a general officer. They did not get it, but no one questioned them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is evident that the existing culture in XVIII Airborne Corps accepts that high-ranking individuals may skip institutionalized procedures with which the rest of the airborne population complies,\u201d Cavoli wrote.<\/p>\n

His report recommends 25 policy changes that affect planning for airborne missions, medical support at paratrooper drop zones and the organization of the notoriously overworked 11th Quartermaster Company.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, what happened was that Wright had a weak exit and hit the door of the aircraft on his way out which sent him into a spin and wrapped him up in the suspension lines. He wasn’t able to open his reserve until he was only 40 feet from the ground, which, of course, was too late.<\/p>\n

The bottom line;<\/p>\n

Wright\u2019s tragic fall from an Air Force C-130 plane flying 1,000 feet above the ground in North Carolina was made possible by a string of administrative oversights, according to the investigation. It was also enabled by a \u201cVIP culture\u201d at Fort Bragg, the Army’s largest post, that allowed senior officers to make late demands on their subordinates and skip the basic safety briefings junior soldiers must attend.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis VIP crap stops now,\u201d Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, commander of the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps, fumed when he read the report on how one of his highest-ranking officers died in a preventable accident, according to an officer who was present.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The military must be running out of O-6s about now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The News Tribune reports on the investigation of the death of Colonel Darron Wright when he … Colonel Darron Wright; pride goes before the fall<\/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":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dumbass-bullshit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54314","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=54314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}