JoeC

The original location for the doc is invalid but it is at a slightly changed location: http://www.skydivewithjohn.com/documents/HistoryofHALOOperations.pdf Thank you for the link. That was a very interesting read. I was serving in Vietnam as a Marine at the tiime all that went down. Pretty amazing stuff.

But this guy says it was at Ft. Bragg and it had a nickname of something like "Bozo Big Top". I think he's blowing hot-air, but have learned to never say never.

I couldn't bring up the link unfortunately and the answer to my question may be in the write-up. So I'll go ahead and ask here in case any old-timers might know the answer. I post on a Marine forum and there is a retiree who claims to have gone thru HALO school at Ft. Bragg in 1980. He claims to have been trained in the vertical wind-tunnel. I read that it wasn't built until 1981 and not used to train soldiers until around 1983. So the guy is either embellishing his experience or there was a wind-tunnel in use by 1980 for HALO student jumpers at Ft. Bragg. Does anyone have any knowledge or memory on the subject?

I only know a little about the last few fatalities at Ted's drop zone. I never saw the 20/20 show and I don't know the legalities of Ted's conviction. I suspect he was truly guilty of something for the last fatality of the 80+ year-old 1st jump student. I liked Ted and always enjoyed jumping at his place, because of his attitude and personality. He reminded me of a jumper from the barnstorming days. After 400 jumps and a 9 year layoff, I was struggling with the idea of getting back into jumping. Ted made me immediately at ease so I went up and did 3 jumps from 4K, 6K, and 9K on a Sat. and I was back in the sport. I never heard the rumor about him being a minor DB Cooper suspect until a few days ago when I stumbled across this cool website.

This is a great thread and I intend to read all the stories, which will take some time. I had a couple of scary experiences in my jumps, but this one I observed from the ground. A Beaver took up a load of jumpers during an accuracy event at a circuit-meet at Seneca Falls, NY back in the late 70's. After the first jumper exited, the plane banked and went into a stall. It happened so suddenly, and the engine was coughing and sputtering as the plane was spiraling rapidly toward the ground. 4 or 5 jumpers managed to to get out at very low altitide and all opened either reserve or main OK. As the plane seemed about to impact at tree-top level, it suddenly righted itself, and climbed back to altitude and the 3 remaining jumpers exited and landed safely. Apparently the pilot was trying to get out of the plane after it stalled. It's an incident I'll never forget.