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Army officer survives 3,500ft fall after parachute fails to open
Telegraph ^ | 11/14/2004 | Sean Rayment

Posted on 11/14/2004 7:53:26 AM PST by Excuse_My_Bellicosity

An Army officer survived falling 3,500 feet from an aircraft after his parachute failed to open properly during a training exercise.

Lieut Charlie Williams, a platoon commander in the Irish Guards, escaped serious injury when he crashed through the corrugated iron roof of a house in a shanty town in eastern Kenya.

The maximum speed he would have achieved during his descent, if his parachute had failed to deploy at all, would have been 120mph, although the actual speed of his impact is unknown.

The 25-year-old officer, who was making only his third parachute jump, cracked three vertebrae in the lower part of his back and dislocated a finger, when his fall was broken by the roof.

In his first interview since the accident, Lieut Williams said: "I was completely helpless, there was nothing I could do. I said to myself 'this is it' and I prepared to die."

The incident began immediately after Lieut Williams jumped from a Cessna 102 aircraft as it circled above Malindi airport. Instead of making a clean exit, he clipped the side of the door and was sent spinning and tumbling through the air. His feet became entangled in the parachute's rigging lines and he began spiralling downward, head first. All attempts to free himself failed.

"The parachute canopy had partly deployed, but my feet were up above me and were preventing it from deploying fully," said Lieut Williams, who was speaking from his parents' home in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

"I was travelling very fast and spinning at the same time. I only realised how fast when I went speeding past the person who had jumped before me, and he was initially 100 feet below me.

"I was very frightened and I was panicking. My body position meant that it was impossible to deploy my reserve parachute. Everything I tried failed, so I resigned myself to the fact that I was about to die.

"Bizarrely, from that point on, everything seemed to slow down and I became strangely calm. I remember thinking of how lonely I felt at the time.

"I just tried to keep things as ordered as possible and waited to see what was going to happen when I hit the ground."

As Lieut Williams fell, his instructors looked on in the belief that he would be killed. They aborted the other jumps, banked the aircraft steeply and followed his path down to earth.

"The next thing I knew, was that I had smashed through the corrugated iron roof of somebody's home and I was lying on the ground with a crowd of puzzled Kenyans looking at me. My immediate thought was 'Oh my God, I'm alive'.

"At that point I wasn't in any particular pain, but I was experiencing an odd sensation. It wasn't exactly an out-of-body experience, but I certainly didn't feel connected to my body. I felt as though I was looking down at myself and my arms and legs were not in the position that they felt they should be.

"Slowly, I realised I could wiggle my toes and clench my leg muscles. I was breathing and I was looking for breaks and bleeding, but there wasn't any. I knew I wasn't paralysed - that was a huge relief but I didn't try to stand up."

After the accident, which happened two weeks ago, Lieut Williams was given first aid by British Army medics. He was later flown to a hospital in Nairobi before being evacuated to Britain.

Lieut Williams joined the Army in 2001 after reading mathematics at Edinburgh University. He was commissioned into the Irish Guards. "I don't know if I'm very lucky or very unlucky. I'm alive and frankly that's all that matters," he said. "I went parachuting because I have a fear of heights and I wanted to crack it. I'm still scared of heights, but I certainly haven't been put off parachuting."

Lt Col Mike Smith, the commandant of the Joint Services Parachuting Centre, in Netheravon, Wiltshire, was in charge of the dropping zone at the airfield. The colonel, who is a veteran of 7,000 parachute jumps, said: "When I arrived at the scene I assumed I would either find a dead body or someone very badly injured. He is a very lucky young man."

Lieut Williams is still receiving treatment but he is expected to rejoin the 1 Bn Irish Guards in January. A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "Adventure training is meant to have an element of risk built into it so the activity is challenging an exciting, but this was a bit excessive."


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: geronimo; parachute; survivor; uktroops
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To: Excuse_My_Bellicosity
There was a recorded documentation of a jumper with a failed parachute hitting the side of a steeply sloped hill,
and as the incline gradually lessened, slowing down and coming to a stop unharmed.
I remember years ago when a cherry jumper piggybacked the 1st Sgt out the door. They collided and entangled immediately.
I was the next jumper out, and saw it happen before my eyes. The cherry was above, and upside down above Top.
Everyone started screaming at them to deploy reserves, which they did.
I remember clearly the cherry sliding down Top's suspension lines, till they were face-to-face.
Sarge was screaming at the newbie idjut to calm down. They landed OK, and when I ran over, Top asked for a cigarette.
He lite it, and smoked for a minute or two before noticing he had lit the filter!
21 posted on 11/14/2004 8:17:09 AM PST by 45semi (A Kennedy speaking, and the wind from me arse, bear suspicious resemblance...)
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To: Excuse_My_Bellicosity
No doubt. Some graphic designer must have had a slow day. It's like drawing a diagram of hitting yourself on the thumb with a hammer.

LOL

22 posted on 11/14/2004 8:18:31 AM PST by Lijahsbubbe
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To: Excuse_My_Bellicosity
There were cases in WWII of aircrew bailing/jumping/thrown from damaged aircraft at great height without any parachute who survived the fall unscathed.
23 posted on 11/14/2004 8:24:17 AM PST by fso301
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To: Excuse_My_Bellicosity

Makes me think of those people jumping from the W.T.C. and their hoping for this kind of a miracle.


24 posted on 11/14/2004 8:24:47 AM PST by MissAmericanPie
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To: mark502inf
There was a movie a while ago called the Gods must be Crazy, where a pilot drops a Coke bottle out of his plane and it survives the fall. A tribe finds it and uses it for smoothing cloth and grinding seed. The tribe fights over it till it's decided to "return it to the Gods" by dropping it off a tall mountain.

I wonder what would of happened if the tribe found this guy. I just had a funny picture in my head about them forcing him to grind seed by head butting a bowl full of them.
25 posted on 11/14/2004 8:36:30 AM PST by Anvilhead
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To: baltodog; All
As a master parachutist myself, and a veteran of over 10,000 jumps including both sport and military ... I can say this guy was lucky. I've seen plenty of partial malfunctions in my time - most do not end well. The ones that do, and there have only been two that I have witnessed, were because their falls were broken. One by soft earth and the other by a pool of water and mudd.

As we say ... "It's not the fall the kills you, but rather the landing."
26 posted on 11/14/2004 8:45:42 AM PST by JRPerry
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To: Anvilhead
grind seed by head butting a bowl full

With a name like Anvilhead, I can understand why you'd picture it that way!:-)

27 posted on 11/14/2004 8:47:57 AM PST by mark502inf
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To: Excuse_My_Bellicosity

Back about 1970 an American GI fell out of a helicopter at 3300 feet in Germany and survived. No parachute. IIRC he landed in a freshly plowed field and went into the ground up to his waist. Screwed him up good from the hips down but he lived.


28 posted on 11/14/2004 8:48:00 AM PST by Rockpile
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To: Squantos; glock rocks

OH $&!T PING!!!

That just has to hurt


29 posted on 11/14/2004 8:50:47 AM PST by ChefKeith (Life is GREAT with CoCo..........NASCAR...everything else is just a game!(Except War & Love))
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To: ElkGroveDan
My favorite part of the drawing is where it says, "Out of control, Charlie Williams falls 3500ft. missing the designated airport landing zone..."
30 posted on 11/14/2004 8:51:43 AM PST by raybbr
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To: fso301

Seems like there was a Navy aircrew in the Pacific--Douglas Dauntless pilot or gunner I think---who fell about 11000 feet with no parachute. I believe they figured he went almost 100 feet down before stopping. All of his gear was ripped off and he almost drowned before reaching the surface. His vest or raft had inflated itself upon impact and he got to the thing and was eventually picked up.


31 posted on 11/14/2004 8:53:08 AM PST by Rockpile
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To: Excuse_My_Bellicosity

Just Damn!!!


32 posted on 11/14/2004 8:53:26 AM PST by Trueblackman (Terrorism and Liberalism never sleep and neither do I)
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To: Anvilhead
What's this?


33 posted on 11/14/2004 8:54:34 AM PST by raybbr
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To: fso301

That is so weird. Who can explain it? Sometimes it's your time to go, sometimes it ain't.


34 posted on 11/14/2004 9:06:04 AM PST by Excuse_My_Bellicosity (Gun-control is leftist mind-control.)
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To: Xenon481

Cats do it every day.


35 posted on 11/14/2004 9:08:45 AM PST by Bogey78O (Kerry surrendered Florida faster than he surrendered the Mekong Delta)
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To: JRPerry

There was a guy who ejected from his MiG-29 at the Paris Airshow. He hit the ground at the same time his plane did (parachute only half opened) and he came away with only a twisted ankle. He was lucky because it had been raining all week and the grassy ground where he landed was very soft.


36 posted on 11/14/2004 9:09:13 AM PST by Excuse_My_Bellicosity (Gun-control is leftist mind-control.)
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To: ElkGroveDan

Have to do illustrations since most in England can't read -English that is. Same reason here that all fast food menus have numbers.


37 posted on 11/14/2004 9:09:30 AM PST by mad_as_he$$ (Off to the store for Marlboro Red's and Miller Beer, NSDQ)
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To: Excuse_My_Bellicosity

It would have been cool if they had put "Thwack" ala 1960s Batman right on the image near where they show impact.


38 posted on 11/14/2004 9:12:32 AM PST by Bogey78O (Kerry surrendered Florida faster than he surrendered the Mekong Delta)
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To: July 4th

True that.


39 posted on 11/14/2004 9:13:22 AM PST by bvw
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To: Mr Ramsbotham

I hope that is true; especially considering all the people who jumped from the WTC.


40 posted on 11/14/2004 9:13:25 AM PST by diamond6 (Everyone who is for abortion has already been born. Ronald Reagan)
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