Posted on 04/16/2022 1:25:04 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Jordan Hatmaker was skydiving in November when the worst thing that could happen happened: Her parachute didn’t open.
The plane was more than 13,000 feet above the ground when she jumped, and she hit the ground at about 80 miles per hour.
Hatmaker’s reserve parachute did actually deploy, but it made her main parachute pop out at the same time.
“They pulled away from each other in the air and then dragged me down in kind of a spiral motion,” she explained.
Once she realized she was going down, Hatmaker had one minute before she hit the ground.
Hatmaker believes that the way she fell saved her life, with her leg hitting the ground first.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
You got that right. I'm a retired C-130 loadmaster and I'd watch paratroopers jump out of my perfectly good C-130 into the cold Alaska winter night, and as they're going out I'm thinking my flight pay is more than their jump pay and I'm going to be in my nice warm bed real soon while they're going to be playing army in the snow all night.
The Russian girl could have helped you out with this.
The jumper exited the jump plane at 60 second delay altitude so she was a reasonably experienced. Her freefall likely ended somewhere between 2500-3000' when she went for her main. The main failed to deploy properly ("streamer") but that may have been resolved when she deployed her reserve. If so, the problem then was that she had two canopies deployed at a cocked, less efficient angle and most jumpers would then cut-away one of the canopies.
Alternatively, she had a streamer and her reserve opened right into the mess above her and she had nothing but a life-threatening event.
In either case, the mess above her put her in a heads-up configuration, She may have been working the problem on impact or the rotation forced her feet out and it appears one foot hit the ground before the other.
She knows exactly what happened and, unless her MD advises her otherwise, seeing her propped up between the balcony railings with a smile on her face, I would be inclined to bet she jumps again.
Lawsuit.
heck of story...went looking to fill in the blanks.
here’s a more robust account...it happened in Novemember
I question the speed. I simply don’t think it is possible for a human to hit an immovable object at 80MMPH and survive.
OMG!
Our dad survived WWII, Korea and Vietnam as a pilot, and on the ground sometimes. He stated that there were two kinds of people that jump out of airplanes. Idiots, and people in the Armed Forces. If he still had two wings, he refused to jump. He was flying a smaller, spotter plane in Vietnam when he was shot down. He used the tops of the trees to slow down. Fortunately, the good guys arrived first. He had a drawer full of medals. The only time he put them on was when some General ordered him. Like many others, he did not talk about all of it very much. He did once say that the true heroes were the ones that did not come back.
A commercial for Twin Towers interviewed a vet who survived a parachute jump. Horrible injuries to legs and spine.
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