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JohnRich

Parachuting in the book "American Sniper"

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I'm reading the book "American Sniper", by Chris Kyle, the Navy SEAL sniper with the record for the most kills, which he achieved in Iraq. I started out #105 on a waiting list for the book from my library, so apparently it's very popular. After several months of waiting I finally reached the top of the list and got my hands on it.

Now don't go getting your panties in a wad - this isn't a thread about guns or war that would belong in Speaker's Corner. My purpose here is to provde an excerpt of the two and a half pages in which he talks about his parachuting experiences. See if you can spot the odd stuff that doesn't sound quite right.

Here it is:

Begin quote

AMONG OUR MORE NORMAL ROTATIONS WAS A RECERTIFICATION class for parachuting.

Jumping out of planes-or, I should say, landing safely after jumping out of planes-is an important skill, but it's a dangerous one. Hell, I've heard it said the Army figures in combat, if they get 70 percent of the guys in a unit to land safely enough to rally and fight, they're doing well.

Think about that. A thousand guys-three hundred don't make it. Not a big deal to the Army.

Oh-kay.

I went to Fort Benning to train with the Army right after I first became a SEAL. I guess I should have realized what I was in for on the first day of school, when a soldier just ahead of me refused to jump. We all stood there waiting-and thinking-while the instructors tended to him.

I'm afraid of heights as it is, and this didn't build my confidence. Holy shit, I wondered, what's he seeing that I'm not? Being a SEAL, I had to make a good showing-or at least not look like a wimp. Once he was taken out of the way, I closed my eyes and plunged ahead.

It was on one of those early static jumps (jumps where the cord is automatically pulled for you, a procedure usually used for beginners) that I made the mistake of looking up to check my canopy as I left the plane.

They tell you not to do that. I was wondering why when the chute deployed. My tremendous sense of relief that I had a canopy and wasn't going to die was mitigated by the rope bums on both sides of my face.

The reason they tell you not to look up is so that you don't get hit by the risers as they fly by your head when the chute opens. Some things you learn the hard way.

And then there are night jumps. You can't see the land coming. You know you have to roll into PLFs-parachute landing falls - but when?

I tell myself, the first time I feel something I'm going to roll.

The first. . . time. . . the f-i-r-s-t . . . !!

I think I banged my head every time I jumped at night.

I WILL SAY I PREFERRED FREEFALL TO STATIC JUMPING. I'M not saying I enjoyed it, just that I liked it a lot better. Kind of like picking the firing squad over being hanged.

In freefall, you came down a lot slower and had much more control. I know there are all these videos of people doing stunts and tricks and having a grand ol' time doing HALO (high altitude, low opening) jumps. There are none of me. I watch my wrist altimeter the whole time. That chord is pulled the split-second I hit the right altitude.

ON MY LAST JUMP WITH THE ARMY, ANOTHER JUMPER CAME right under me as we descended. When that happens, the lower canopy can "steal" the air beneath you. The result is . . . you fall faster than you were falling.
The consequences can be pretty dramatic, depending on the circumstances. In this case, I was seventy feet from the ground. I ended up falling from there, and having a couple of tree branches and the ground beat the crap out of me. I walked away with some bumps and bruises and a few broken ribs.

Fortunately, it was the last jump of the school. My ribs and I soldiered on, glad to be done.

OF COURSE, AS BAD AS PARACHUTING IS, IT BEATS SPY-RIGGING. Spy-rigging may look cool, but one wrong move and you can spin off in Mexico. Or Canada. Or maybe even China.

Strangely, though, I like helos. During this workup, my platoon worked with MH-6 Little Birds. Those are very small, very fast scout-and-attack helicopters adapted for Special Operations work. Our versions had benches fitted to each side; three SEALs can sit on each bench.

I loved them.

True, I was scared to death getting on the damn thing. But once the pilot took off and we were in the air, I was hooked. It was a tremendous adrenaline rush-you're low and fast. It's awesome. The momentum of the aircraft keeps you in place; you don't even feel any wind buffeting.

And hell-if you fall, you'll never feel a thing.


End quote

Note: "Spy rigging" is where ropes are thrown out of the helicopter and the soldiers on the ground clip themselves to the ropes and are lifted up dangling on the end under the chopper and carried away.

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Probably likes guns more than parachutes, and doesn't care for static at all...



I'm sure that is true. Chris Kyle is also appearing on the TV show "Stars Earn Stripes", in which famous people get training by military experts in performing a competition involving military skills. Kyle seems like the real deal, and a humble guy too. He explains in his book that he isn't a particularly good sniper, and only graduated in the middle of the pack in his sniper class, almost failing the stalking phase. He attributes his record to the simple "luck" of being assigned to the battle of Fallujah in Iraq, in which the enemy was everywhere, and he had plenty of targets. It's not that he's a better sniper, just that he had more opportunities to take shots.

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Thanks for the excerpt. I hope the rest of it is better than that as it doesn't come across as being particularly well written. Not all soldier stories are of course and often the writting style is something to be overlooked in favour of the tail they tell.

I'm not so sure there's anything so odd about what he says. Perhaps a little bit mixed up between HALO (presumably on squares) and rounds where your canopy can have its air 'stolen' by the low man. And of course the 70% down thing which is a potential combat drop loss, not simply acceptable losses due to parachute malfunctions etc. Funny how people shooting planes out of the sky and at people under canopy can have something of an impact the loss rate. That he doesn't make particularly clear but I'll let that slide as either misunderstanding on his part or dramatic licence.

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I'm reading the book "American Sniper", by Chris Kyle, the Navy SEAL sniper with the record for the most kills, which he achieved in Iraq. I started out #105 on a waiting list for the book from my library, so apparently it's very popular. After several months of waiting I finally reached the top of the list and got my hands on it.

Now don't go getting your panties in a wad - this isn't a thread about guns or war that would belong in Speaker's Corner. My purpose here is to provde an excerpt of the two and a half pages in which he talks about his parachuting experiences. See if you can spot the odd stuff that doesn't sound quite right.

Here it is:

Begin quote



AMONG OUR MORE NORMAL ROTATIONS WAS A RECERTIFICATION class for parachuting.

Jumping out of planes-or, I should say, landing safely after jumping out of planes-is an important skill, but it's a dangerous one. Hell, I've heard it said the Army figures in combat, if they get 70 percent of the guys in a unit to land safely enough to rally and fight, they're doing well.

Think about that. A thousand guys-three hundred don't make it. Not a big deal to the Army.

Oh-kay.

I went to Fort Benning to train with the Army right after I first became a SEAL. I guess I should have realized what I was in for on the first day of school, when a soldier just ahead of me refused to jump. We all stood there waiting-and thinking-while the instructors tended to him.

I'm afraid of heights as it is, and this didn't build my confidence. Holy shit, I wondered, what's he seeing that I'm not? Being a SEAL, I had to make a good showing-or at least not look like a wimp. Once he was taken out of the way, I closed my eyes and plunged ahead.

It was on one of those early static jumps (jumps where the cord is automatically pulled for you, a procedure usually used for beginners) that I made the mistake of looking up to check my canopy as I left the plane.

They tell you not to do that. I was wondering why when the chute deployed. My tremendous sense of relief that I had a canopy and wasn't going to die was mitigated by the rope bums on both sides of my face.

The reason they tell you not to look up is so that you don't get hit by the risers as they fly by your head when the chute opens. Some things you learn the hard way.

And then there are night jumps. You can't see the land coming. You know you have to roll into PLFs-parachute landing falls - but when?

I tell myself, the first time I feel something I'm going to roll.

The first. . . time. . . the f-i-r-s-t . . . !!

I think I banged my head every time I jumped at night.

I WILL SAY I PREFERRED FREEFALL TO STATIC JUMPING. I'M not saying I enjoyed it, just that I liked it a lot better. Kind of like picking the firing squad over being hanged.

In freefall, you came down a lot slower and had much more control. I know there are all these videos of people doing stunts and tricks and having a grand ol' time doing HALO (high altitude, low opening) jumps. There are none of me. I watch my wrist altimeter the whole time. That chord is pulled the split-second I hit the right altitude.

ON MY LAST JUMP WITH THE ARMY, ANOTHER JUMPER CAME right under me as we descended. When that happens, the lower canopy can "steal" the air beneath you. The result is . . . you fall faster than you were falling.
The consequences can be pretty dramatic, depending on the circumstances. In this case, I was seventy feet from the ground. I ended up falling from there, and having a couple of tree branches and the ground beat the crap out of me. I walked away with some bumps and bruises and a few broken ribs.

Fortunately, it was the last jump of the school. My ribs and I soldiered on, glad to be done.

OF COURSE, AS BAD AS PARACHUTING IS, IT BEATS SPY-RIGGING. Spy-rigging may look cool, but one wrong move and you can spin off in Mexico. Or Canada. Or maybe even China.

Strangely, though, I like helos. During this workup, my platoon worked with MH-6 Little Birds. Those are very small, very fast scout-and-attack helicopters adapted for Special Operations work. Our versions had benches fitted to each side; three SEALs can sit on each bench.

I loved them.

True, I was scared to death getting on the damn thing. But once the pilot took off and we were in the air, I was hooked. It was a tremendous adrenaline rush-you're low and fast. It's awesome. The momentum of the aircraft keeps you in place; you don't even feel any wind buffeting.

And hell-if you fall, you'll never feel a thing.


End quote

Note: "Spy rigging" is where ropes are thrown out of the helicopter and the soldiers on the ground clip themselves to the ropes and are lifted up dangling on the end under the chopper and carried away.



You don't jump on the first day, do you. If you have a helmet on the risers won't hit your face.

Sparky
My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

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Yep, you picked up on the poor writing in that small excerpt. The whole book is like that, and doesn't impress me. However, the story itself is gripping.

How about how he said that you fall slower in freefall than on static line? I'm sure what he meant was under canopy, because it would be a ram-air versus a round, but he didn't explain that.

In one sentence he talks about pulling the "cord", and in another he calls it the "chord". "Chord" is a wing design term, and not something you pull to deploy a parachute.

Re: "Ropes". I don't know how much of this was his own writing, or his co-author, which may be a whuffo person trying to translate Kyle's story into language understood by the masses, but botching it.

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Yep, you picked up on the poor writing in that small excerpt. The whole book is like that, and doesn't impress me. However, the story itself is gripping.

How about how he said that you fall slower in freefall than on static line? I'm sure what he meant was under canopy, because it would be a ram-air versus a round, but he didn't explain that.

In one sentence he talks about pulling the "cord", and in another he calls it the "chord". "Chord" is a wing design term, and not something you pull to deploy a parachute.

Re: "Ropes". I don't know how much of this was his own writing, or his co-author, which may be a whuffo person trying to translate Kyle's story into language understood by the masses, but botching it.



John,

I cut Chris a lot of slack on this because if the whole book reads like that, then he did indeed have a whuffo editor -- and a bad one at that.

The "cord" "chord" thing, for example, is Editing 101; be consistent with a word use (even if it's wrong!).

Reading between the lines of the jumping excerpts (and buttressed by your comment that the whole book reads like that), I think that Chris either told his story orally, and then it was transcribed and edited by a total effing whuffo (whuffo about jumping and the military too), or he wrote a very rough draft that was then "fixed" by said whuffo editor(s).

Years ago, I edited Gung-Ho magazine, which was like Soldier of Fortune except it was the real deal instead of a Walter Mitty mercenary rag (to be fair, SOF got better and better as time went on).

Anyway, the people who wrote for us were the real deal -- professional soldiers, NOT professional writers -- and for many of them, English was a second, third or even fourth language.

So editing their stuff was quite a challenge in terms of retaining truth, accuracy and flavor but at the same time making it readable (and I was up to it because, editing skills aside, I'm not a military whuffo).*

So it seems clear to me from these excerpts that Chris did not do the final writeup, and I would suspect that he's a bit embarrassed by how some of it came out, and has probably been getting a ration of poop from his homeys about some of it.

As Sparky pointed out, you don't jump the first day of jump school -- not even from the 34-foot towers, which when I went to jump school resulted in more refusals to jump than from the actual airplanes!

44
B|


* Interesting side note: Even though the soldiers were not professional writers, they were excellent storytellers; whatever they sent in always had all the key information. They were complete stories, so while it was challenging to fix their bad sentences, missing punctuation, terrible spelling and non-English grammar, it was always doable because everything was in the story.

The periodic submissions we got from professional writers, on the other hand, were often technically correct in terms of spelling, punctuation, grammar and sentence structure, but were worthless because they left out critical pieces of the story -- you know, kinda like almost every news story ever written about a parachuting incident.

:S
SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.)

"The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

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Spy rig should be SPIE rigging. Whuffo y'all hang on that string fo?:P

Bad editors. Good thing they just wrote an average grunt tale and didn't have to turn Angry Tom's rigging stuff into Poynter's!

It's called the Hillbilly Hop N Pop dude.
If you're gonna be stupid, you better be tough.
That's fucked up. Watermelons do not grow on trees! ~Skymama

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I think it's a case of "rush to print" to beat the next Seal book release...



That's probably one element of it. He states that if he didn't write his own story, that someone else was going to do it without his permission. So he decided to go ahead and do it himself, his own way, to tell the story the way he wanted it told. I can't blame him for that.

There can always be a second edition with corrections.

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