Posted on 08/15/2017 5:16:53 AM PDT by Strac6
WHITEVILLE, Tenn. —
Age is just a number... and local World War II veteran Roy Angin was not about to let his stop him from making one last airborne jump.
Angin turned 95 on Thursday.
He went through U.S. Army Airborne School in 1940 and served overseas during World War II.
Now, Angin spends his days at the Wesley Meadows Retirement Community where he lives in Hernando, Mississippi.
Saturday, he got a chance to relive his airborne days.
Angin made one last jump, skydiving from 14,500 feet at the West Tennessee Skydiving center in Whiteville, Tennessee.
Good for him, but when I got out of the Army I never had the desire to make another jump.
14,500? Isn’t that really high for skydiving? Especially at his age?
Bkmrk for later
[Good for him, but when I got out of the Army I never had the desire to make another jump.]
“Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane is an unnatural act”
Gunny Highway
LOL, thanks for your service.
Why not? The door was open! (said the father of a former skydiver pilot) HA!
My brother was in the 82nd Airborne in the late 50's/early 60's.When he got out he continued jumping in competitions for a while.
He didn’t jump alone.
It's 'just a number.'
Roy Anglin (left) and a friend during World War II.
Full video here (6+ mins):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ipFTJXQF38
My brother was in the 82nd Airborne in the late 50’s/early 60’s.When he got out he continued jumping in competitions for a while.
Not every paratrooper will admit this, but I will be honest. I was scared every time I made a jump. I never got to the point I liked it. It was just part of the job that paid an extra $55 a month.
Airborne Attitude: “Boys, we’re surrounded. We’ve got the poor bastards right where we want’em.”
For myself, I can only marvel at such an attitude.
And you got those really cool boots as well as extra money.
You also lost your pmos and became 11b
We used to go back to the drop zone at Bragg to see those
Big drops.I remember all those ambulances picking up the injured.
For myself, I can only marvel at such an attitude.
Well damn - for $55 a month, how can you afford to not jump out of planes?
I always find it amazing how many jobs have some extra benefit that pales in comparison to what you have to do to earn it.
I knew a fellow who was on the bomb squad at the Sheriff’s Office. His benefit was full retirement in 20 years instead of the usual 25. Assuming he made it that long.
Go jump somewhere. With the new equipment, and jumping on calm wind days with no huge bag handing between your balls, it’s easy.
I’m 73, but still on the “Control Group” roster with the USAR. Now have had 18 years of waivers. There are 8 of us old lawyers who they still keep around to they can blame us if the fit ever hits the shan big time. Along with our “support staff” of 3 old E-9s and 2 E-8s, we all still get together for two days every six months to jump on the last day of one month and the next day, the first day of the next month.
First day’s jump is fueled by fear. Second day’s by residual alcohol.
The JAG said we are wrecking his budget, but he is Airborne too!
And at the other end of the spectrum, there are always folks who abuse the benefit.
I was an aircrew member for a portion of my Air Force career. Two of the squadrons I was assigned to flew missions over Bosnia back in the 1990s, part of the William Jefferson Clinton Foreign Policy World Tour. Never felt particularly endangered flying overland Bosnia, despite the fact our aircraft didn’t have a radar warning receiver and we didn’t receive a counter-measures system until we had been conducting “feet dry” missions for several months. And did I mention that one of our daytime orbit areas was within 75 miles of where Scott O’Grady got hosed, and we never had good intel on the location of Serbian SA-6s.
Those factors entitled us to hazardous duty pay, on top of our flight pay. As I recall, you had to fly one over-land mission in a 30-day period to collect hazardous duty pay for that month. And just like clockwork, we always had a lot of “observers” for missions before the end of the month —staff weenies from the Combined Air Ops Center who tagged along so they could collect for the month.
The other, favored method for collecting hazardous duty pay in those days was actually landing at a spot in the Balkans and remaining there for a specified period of time (I think it was 24 hours). We didn’t land in Bosnia as a part of normal ops, so our platform wasn’t an option. But there were shuttle flights from Italy to Zagreb, and there was always a full passenger manifest for those hops during the last week of the month, The official reason was “coordination” with UN officials, but the primary purpose was allowing staff types and senior officers to get their hazardous duty pay without spending 8-12 hours on our aircraft, or others that flew over Bosnia.
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