You don’t talk when your body hurtles toward the ground at 120 miles-per-hour.
But when you safely touch down courtesy of a German Soldier tethered to you during a tandem-jump from 13,000 feet above Perris, California, words flow fast: “Experience of a lifetime,” “So glad I did it.” “Ruined me for rollercoasters!”
Eight Defense Media Activity (DMA) people used those words and more to describe what it felt like to jump out of a plane so high up in the sky that your face flaps like a cold scarf on a windy day.
One of the jumpers, Sergeant 1st Class Esteban Sanchez, liked it so much he went up twice. The T-ASA Soldier had taken 25 static-line jumps when he was airborne qualified, but this was different. “Previously my chute opened automatically after a four-second count. Here, there was almost a full minute of free fall,” he said. “It was breathtaking.”
The recent jumps were part of a partnership with March Air Reserve Base and the German Army designed to increase interoperability.
“We got to use civilian planes for some of our jumps, which is cost effective,” said German Lt. Col. Markus Stobbe. “We also got to jump out of a C17 from March Air Reserve Base, as well as take tandem heavy equipment and night jumps, jumps in flight formations and night jumps with oxygen from higher altitudes.”
Stobbe has jumped tandem more than 600 times, so he didn’t need the practice. “I really enjoy the feedback from people who are telling me it’s the greatest thing they’ve ever done,” he said.
The jumps benefit the German Army as well. Less experienced Soldiers need to perform a certain number of jumps before they become tandem qualified.
“Sometimes our Soldiers think their position is perfect during jumps, but they need to develop more feeling for what their body is doing,” said Stobbe. “We help them by recording every jump on video and critiquing them afterward.”
While American tandem jumpers weren’t critiqued on their form, each got to view their falling human pretzel experience. To a person, each had the same reaction … a wish to do it again next year when the German team returns.
| Date Taken: | 04.07.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 04.07.2020 19:05 |
| Story ID: | 366816 |
| Location: | BAYERN, DE |
| Web Views: | 43 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, American Military Tandem Jump With German Soldiers in California, by George Smith, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
