Most folk are impressed that I was a Ranger. I am proud of that service, but it’s my service as a pathfinder that gives me the biggest personal egoboo. In the mid to late 1980s, there were only a handful of pathfinder detachments. The detachments were about the size of half a platoon. They were very, very hard to get into because they were so few and so relatively unknown. Now I’ll be the first to admit that on a gung-ho fighting level pretty much all the rest of the special operations types were higher on the food chain. But I did more in the 187th than I did anywhere else.
Now one of the things I did was pick up airborne wings from other nations. It’s a reciprocal thing the various friendly airborne units do, and as a rule you get to skip the rest of the school and go straight to jump week — and most of the time you get to skip the spit, polish and sweat of the students. You are, after all, airborne, you’re just meeting more brothers. yeah. Anyway, some of the wings I picked up were in Honduras.
Now the joke of the airborne is the answer to “why would anyone jump out of a perfectly good airplane.” The answer is, “nobody would, but the air force doesn’t have a perfectly good airplane.” I know, not that funny. Anyway, most air forces use relatively modern aircraft. It was in Honduras that I learned just how accidentally skilled our jumping forefathers were. See, in Honduras they jumped – and still jump, I understand – from C47s. Dakotas. Skytrains. Gooney Birds.
For those who don’t get it, C-47s are what carried our airborne forces over Normandy on D-Day, and throughout the rest of the war. It is a workhorse aircraft, and has a reputation of… Heinlein in Glory Road said it best. “It would get to Singapore on one engine if asked. I knew my luck was in as soon as I saw that grand old collection of masking tape and glue sitting on the field.” I’d read of them numerous times, always with the praise and astonishment at the miracles they pulled of regularly. This week, I got to jump from one.
In most ways, it was the same as any other jump. Oh, there was no inbound row of seats, just a row on each side of the fuselage. One stand up command, no big deal. It’s a bit shorter than the C-130s I’d been from – in fact, a bit shorter than the CH-47. Head room was a bit shorter than the CH-47 as well, though it was just a fuselage ceiling and not a bunch of mysterious pipes and packing running fore to aft. Still, I could stand well enough – I certainly had room given the need to hunch for the shuffle and balance. Shuffle and balance, however, were the first big deal.
I noticed the pleasure when I first boarded. In most modern aircraft the floor has some sort of low-slip or no-slip texture. In these aircraft it was bare metal. At rest, the C-47 rests on a tail wheel and the floor is NOT level. I was mortified at how I was slipping and sliding as I moved up the slope to my spot – but soon noticed I wasn’t the only one with problems.
The floor was just as slick on exiting. At least it was level, and the pilot was very, very good at maintaining stability while the cargo exited. Still, I learned (several times that week) that the airborne shuffle solved a LOT of problems, the biggest making sure your entire stick left in a controlled manner. Nobody fell, but every move felt like I was trying to walk across an icy sidewalk.
The last difference was the door. Remember the ceiling is a bit low, and realize this means the door is as well. I later discovered I hadn’t needed to duck on the way out – barely – but a couple of my teammates did. One said he banged his helmet every single time – at 6-3- that didn’t surprise me.
The bird was hot and cramped. It brought on some degree of claustrophobia after only a few minutes. Slick floors, a headbanger of a door, and utterly reliable. I’ve jumped from a lot of different aircraft (some of which I want to write about later), but this one made me ponder my past – the past of my nation and my (then) profession.
For that reason alone I have a bit of a fondness for the nation of Honduras. Of such things are memories and traditions built.
July 6, 2009 at 10:07 am
My Ranger Buddy from Detroit climbed the cliffs in France that had the Coastal Artilley on it for a D-Day celebration once. He was all frazzled cause it took them so long and his stick was spread out over the cliff and he is yelling and bitching at his crew. An old timer comes up to him and goes,”Sergent, if someone was shooting at them, they would get up here a lot faster. Don’t worry about it.”
Dave looks and see the Ranger tab on his shoulder and just salutes and says, “Thank you sir”.
Jumping from a Gooney would be pretty freaking cool.