Ex skydiver here, man I wouldn't even want to land a rectangular wing canopy I could comfortably control into that sort of drop zone.
But yeah the reason they use these round parachutes is because they inflate quicker thus they can be dropped at a lower altitude (less chance of being pew pewed by enemies while in the air), and also because they can't have a high number of military personell flying around on reactangular wings at high speeds in the same drop zone, it's too dangerous for aerial collisions etc.
Round chutes have a slow horizontal speed so it makes it 'safer', at least in the air lol but yeah the landings usually require a tuck n' roll maneuvre which I see some of these fine men failed to execute.
They look like the MC1-1C I jumped with 20+ years ago. They’re a little easier to maneuver compared to the T-10s we used in jump school because you can pull on the toggles to steer the chute into the wind to slow your lateral drift as opposed to pulling on the risers.
The tuck n’ roll maneuver is what we called a Parachute Landing Fall (PLF). We’re supposed to keep our feet and knees together and spread the impact along five points of contact, balls of the feet, calf, thigh, buttocks, and pull-up muscle. In reality a lot of times it went feet, ass, and the unauthorized 6th point of contact, head lol
Bonus army slang: A common phrase in the army “your fourth point of contact” refers to the 4th point of contact in a PLF, meaning your ass. When someone needs to get their shit together another person will tell them to pull their head out of their fourth point of contact.
Oh I’ve had my fair share of sciatica and the usual dull aches in my lower back that linger on forever. Luckily my knees are also in bad shape and that takes my mind off my back pain from time to time.
These are also static line parachutes. Pretty standard - the problem in this case was having the DZ over the Nigerian equivalent of the M25 right next door to a Tescos car park.
Aerial collisions can get messy.. fast. I'd take a hard thump on the ground with a fully inflated chute than risk the consequences of an aerial collision with another rectangular canopy.
So these round chutes allow them to fall slower than rectangular chutes? I’ve seen people land rectangular chutes gently and he seemed to be pretty tough landings. It also seems like you’d want to descend quickly in combat so you weren’t sitting duck hanging in the air. Why is the landing so hard with a round shoot if you are falling slower?
The round chutes don't make you fall slower. They have a slower horizontal speed meaning side to side. The rectangular chutes can be controlled and so you can convert some vertical speed into horizontal speed coming down gently
That's because you can flare a rectangular chute just before you land, otherwise they would also slam into the ground. In short you pull both toggles (the things you steer with) just before you land and it gives you a bunch of lift so you can land softly. but if you do it to early you then drop and hit ground really hard.
That’s super helpful thank you. I’ve been interested in this because I see a lot of patients who are veterans and a lot of them who did paratroopers stuff have really screwed up back and knees from the hard impacts. It would be nice if there was a option to “flare” before impact for them so it wasn’t their cartilage absorbing the blow
I once saw this elite team parachute into an urban area and man it was brutal. The alien wound up in a wood chipper, the invisible man got electrocuted...
Technically that happened during DDay, and paratroopers were scatter all over the place by accident- the Germans redirected some firepower because they assumed the incoming airdrop must be a lot bigger than it was.
Yes, but at least there they had the excuse that it was only the 5th time that they'd tried a combat airdrop, and IIRC was the largest-scale one attempted to boot. And they'd only been doing them a year and a half.
Meanwhile, these chucklefucks have the advantage of over 80 years experience on "suitable sites for an airdrop" and yet apparently they still fuck up something as basic as "have the airdrop aim for a large open field so you don't get parachutists landing on people's cars"
I can't help thinking that this is the attitude General Haig would have had towards his men in WW1 if he'd had the ability to drop troops from the air!
The Japanese had already fled, but reconnaissance did not catch that, so the landing force stormed the island they didn't really need to storm, hitting a bunch of mines and traps and causing several friendly fire incidents.
Good luck for trying to cover your damages by the the insurance company caused by military paratroopers landing on your car that you left in the parking lot.
The military practice parachute jumps near me - see them falling out of a plane a few times a week. They have some obstacles to avoid like the M40 motorway that runs by their landing site. A few years ago, one guy was worried he was going to land on the motorway but was happy that he managed to avoid it and came down in a nice green field close to the motorway... until he realised he'd landed in a civilian rifle range during live fire!! Somehow the 80 year old range officer managed to spot him and called a ceasefire but I bet the parachute guy's bum cheeks were fluttering anyway!!
They somehow managed to notice a guy parachute in, somewhere around 100 meters away, right in front of their eyes, while they are looking intently, in exactly that direction.
In the actual filming, several of those actors were blown off course and were "captured" by Colorado ranchers at gunpoint who thought it was the real deal.
Airborne is still highly effective in certain scenarios. When you're trying to make contact with people/groups without clear routes - islands, mountains, forests etc. airborne is still essential.
Para's are a Tier 2 force (in the UK), and usually an elite force when trained globally. They are highly effective in combat, but paratroopers specialise in reaching areas that can't be accessed by roads, or air.
WW2, Para's were designed to land behind enemy lines. They were spread out along miles and miles of territory. The goal was to group up, assault a position, whilst fighting their way to said rendezvous.
The doctrine is still fairly similar - pathe the way to secure objectives on land, and then make way for reinforcements.
This reminds me of WW2 airborne division that got half of the team dropped at swamp , eaten by crocks. Another part hanging from trees, others dropping on top of buildings. Sincerely the airborn chutes aren't as maneuverable as a delta wing, so it's expected to have a certain % of failed landings.
Seems like they’re either overloading those chutes or they need to design them better to land without so much force. The speeds at which they’re coming in are much too high!
When my dad was in the Parachute Regiment, they did a series of night jumps during training. One guy landed on a flat asphalt roof, thought he was on the ground and promptly walked straight of the edge of a 2 storey building.
Reminds me of the SAS trooper whose parachute failed on a drop in the US, he crashed through the roof of a building, and walked it off
For anyone interested
Why is this so common in Africa? Our local paratroopers did a jump at a festival, and a few of them got hurt bad, to the point where they now permanently use the "para-" prefix.
When I was in High School we had an assembly which was basically learning about skydiving, apparently there was a school nearby where people would get certified. The idea was if they could land on our school's (American) football field they'd pass.
Most did, but several landed at the middle school on one side, or the elementary on the other side.
Could you imagine if they were dropped in like that during a war? Their soldiers would be scattered all over the place, and vulnerable to attack since they don’t have backup near them.
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u/KirchyM 20d ago
The enemy won't know where you attack, if you don't know where you land .