It’s funny to me how watching or hearing something can bring back memories. The other day I saw a video of an older man parachuting out of a plane and free-falling 25,000 feet before opening his chute.
Parachuting reminded me of another old navy story. A long time ago I was on a navy flight crew. Our planes were EC 121 Lockheed early warning radar equipped behemoths. Flight crews are issued high-top boots and are required to wear them on any flights. The reason for the high tops is when you have to parachute out of a plane, when you pull the ripcord that momentary jerk will pop a street shoe right off your feet.
After each deployment, on the way back to Guam there was a requirement to hold a parachute drill. Me being a guy that follows the rules would always run back, grab a parachute, put it on and stand by the exit door, just in case. Most of the crew would meander back and lift a parachute and then wait until the drill was over. We rarely flew much higher than at 3000 feet, so if there had been engine problems there wouldn’t have been much time to suit up and get out of the plane.
Our plane commander was a crusty old Lieutenant Commander named Armstrong. I think he went all the way back to World War Two. He never wore the boots and somehow that made me feel good that he obviously never intended to parachute out of that plane.
One time just before we were leaving DaNang the airfield came under fire with a mortar attack. I will always believe old Armstrong lifted that big EC 121 off the ground in less time and runway space than was ever attempted before. He had the brakes locked and the engines revving up so high it felt like the plane was going to shake itself apart before he released the brakes and we shot down that runway like a .45 caliber bullet. I wonder now if he ever thought, “Gee I should have put those damn boots on.”
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