CHAPTER 38 OUR PRECIOUS PARACHUTES

After the evacuation of the dead and wounded, amongst the first things retrieved from the battle area after every operational drop, were the parachutes. These were usually stuffed into a helicopter and flown out to the FAF, from where they would be sent back to the New Sarum Safety Equipment Section for repair and repacking. Due to sanctions, parachutes and related equipment were always hard to get and were consequently treated like gold.

As almost everything was hard to get in Rhodesia at that time, our soldiers, even the youngest, and most inexperienced, were very aware of the value of their equipment and always made a great effort to collect and care for their parachutes.

This also applied to free fall parachutes which were sometimes used at great distances across our borders. When the troops who’d jumped in from dizzy altitudes, into hostile territory, in the middle of the night, were evacuated back to base, their parachutes invariably came with them. The only time parachutes were abandoned was when they were burned in a fire, (usually caused by the battle), when there was an emergency “hot extraction” of troops or when the distances were just too great to make retrieval a sensible option.

At the height of the war, parachuting, both training and operational, was happening on a continual basis so one of the biggest problems became logistical.  We had to ensure the Fire Forces had sufficient parachutes to carry out their operations. We also had to have enough parachutes for normal static line training, and in addition we had to have a large number of freefall parachutes packed every day for operations and training.

To keep a track of our requirements, the Fire Force PJIs sent in a daily record of what was known as the, ‘Parastate’. This was a log of the number of parachutes available for ops, the number used the previous day and any reserve parachutes approaching their re-pack dates. Things were always tight, and the parachute packers were kept mightily busy.In 1978 the Safety Equipment Section at New Sarum Air Force Base was packing parachutes at the rate of 2000 per month for the various Fire Forces.

Although safety remained the highest priority, use-by dates and other such random niceties had to be ignored. This led to a few words with our industrious parachute packers, the Safety Equipment Workers.  One morning in 1971 I sent the troops down to draw parachutes for their next jump and was told there weren’t any. This was before the advent of the Parra Fire Force and we were still with only the SAS as trained parachutists.

 I, of course, in my usual calm and considered manner, stormed down to the Safety Equipment Section, and demanded to know what the hell was going on.  I was informed that all our X-Type parachutes were now time expired; they had gone past their ten year use-by-date and should be tossed out. I was staggered, and demanded to know from where they got this spectacularly useless bit of information.

The Warrant Officer in charge of Safety Equipment immediately produced a manual, and lo and behold, there in clear type, was stated the X-Type parachute had an approximate 10 year use-by-date.

But use-by dates were luxuries we could not afford. I solved the problem by tearing that page right out of the manual and ordering them to pack the damn parachutes. What complete and utter bullshit. How could a parachute be serviceable today, and without doing anything to it, have it become unserviceable tomorrow. I feel sorry for them now – they were just trying to do a solid job and keep us all safe, but we could not throw perfectly good parachutes away because of some arbitrary date, written in a manual or not.

This photograph was taken in about 1963 before the break up of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and shows 3 Dakota's of 3 Squadron Royal Rhodesian Air Force dropping 60 men of C (Rhodesia) Squadron of 22 SAS Regiment. They were jumping with X type parachutes and in one pass they used 60% of our parachutes. Just as well we were just training in those days and we were still thinking and training in WW11  style. All these troops were jumping with suspended loads and they were the old PWC(parachutist weapons container) from WW 2 times. It took hours to prepare for the jump in those days and after landing your weapon was 15ft away and hard to get out of the container. Fortunately we  were re equipped with the SAVIAC parachute enabling us to change our ways completely.

Because the Safety Equipment Section came under the Armaments umbrella, I also had an argument with the Station Armaments Officer and the Staff Armaments Officer at Air Force Headquarters. “You don’t jump with the bloody things,” I said, “ I do, and I say they are okay.” I won the argument. The parachutes remained in use, and, thanks to the job done by our Safety Equipment Section, they stayed safe. Much later the X type was withdrawn from everyday use, but we still used some for PJI training just to give the new staff the experience of jumping with them. The majority of these old parachutes became supply droppers and were used by #3 Air Supply Platoon. In Rhodesia nothing was thrown away. 

When things were quiet on the Fire Force, permission was granted to carry out one training jump per week. It was up to the PJI to dictate the altitude, and the equipment the troops would carry on these “fun jumps” – as a consequence some were done from 2000, or even 3000ft, AGL. These jumps were usually done in the evening with little or no wind and gave the troops a great boost especially if they were in clean fatigue with no weapons or other load. It was a great way to end an otherwise quiet day and it also increased the parachuting skills of the soldiers.

The parachutes used on these fun jumps, as well as those used on operational jumps, were returned to New Sarum on the first available transport, whether by truck or by air, so they could be repacked and returned to a FAF as soon as possible. The troops might have to wait – the parachutes never did. Sometimes we even used a Dakota or Islander to supply fresh parachutes to Fire Forces, and return the used ones to be repacked.

 It was also the PJI’s responsibility to ensure all parachutes on the Fire Force bases were stored in the best possible way, kept out of the weather and dry. The troops could be stuck outside in horrendous conditions, but our little babies were always given the utmost care. In most cases, the parachutes received better treatment than the men.

During our selection process for parachutes, we watched some training films  made during the Second World War. They showed the PT-10 parachute hooked up onto the overhead cable in a Dakota. Of course, we had to try this out, because whenever we used the X-Type parachute we had to use a side cable and a strop about 12 ft long. The overhead cable made it much easier, and neater, and it worked fine.

The PT-10 parachute was of American design and was 35-feet in diameter, much larger than the British, war time X-Type, which was only 28-feet wide. This larger parachute reduced our rate of descent from 22 feet-per-second to approximately 16 feet-per-second – a great improvement. In addition, the PT-10 had a shaped canopy which reduced the oscillation, and therefore was much kinder to the parachutist.

The only problem with the PT-10 was that it was made from rip-stop nylon, which was supposed to prevent it from tearing. However, as with most things American, it was supposed to be used only once and then discarded. We also found that if you hit a tree with it, it shredded quite easily, especially when you tried to pull it off the tree using a Landrover, or other such vehicle. We couldn’t afford disposable parachutes.

As mentioned in an earlier post, we later obtained the SAVIAC parachute from South Africa. This parachute was made from similar nylon to the X-Type. It was much tougher. When you hit a tree with this parachute and then hooked it to the back of a vehicle to rip it off, you might stump the tree, but you would do very little damage to the canopy. This was great for us in little old, sanction-struck, Rhodesia.

I deliberately carried out a few parachute descents into trees, to see what would happen, and found it was better to hit trees than the hard ground. The trees cushioned your landing, and, provided you had your legs tight together and your arms crossed over your face, elbows pushing down on the reserve, fists clenched, the chance of injury was minimised.

 I should say it was mostly better to land in the trees. But it all depended on the height of those trees. One night I’d been involved in freefall operations so my staff were doing the basic training courses back at New Sarum. I instructed them to do the course night-jump onto our usual bush DZ, and left them to it. I was really tired, having been awake for over 24hrs, so I went home for desperately needed sleep.

I was not happy at all to receive a late night phone call. It was Mike Wiltshire, the DZ Safety Officer for this particular drop, and he wanted me to know a parachutist was stuck up a very large gum tree.

 At this time, all night drops were run by people calling out directions from the ground.  The DZ Safety Officer would direct the pilot to fly in over the DZ and then transmit instructions to “go left, go right” etc. until they were in the correct position. They would then give the order “Red light on,” for the troops to stand in the door, and finally, “Green light on” for the troops to be dispatched. This meant that the entire operation regarding direction and the landing of the troops was the responsibility of the DZ Safety Officer. In this case poor old Mike.

He was doing his level best to get the troops to land as close to the trucks as possible. This would make it quicker and easier to get everyone back home again. But he made one slight error and one of the students landed on the top of a very, very high gum tree. And was now well and truly stuck.

This gum tree was pretty close to 300 feet high and it took the Salisbury fire brigade and their very long ladder to get him down. The pupil, on instruction, had bravely pulled his reserve parachute, and climbed out of his harness. He then shimmied down his reserve and was now sitting, hugging the tree, 180 feet above the ground.

I was as mad as a cut snake. My beauty sleep had been interrupted and now our parachute was stuck up a tree! (I was, of course, more worried about the parachute than parachutist.) I told Mike to get the bloody parachute back come hell or high water the next morning. He utilized all his charm and got a 7 Sqn helicopter to help out.