Damn! The T-10 parachutes I jumped with at Fort Benning had canopy releases at the shoulders.

He must have have forgotten he had releases.
However I did see an officer create what looked like a motor boat rooster tail as he was being pulled the length of a drainage ditch.
Funny as hell to me. The officers were in separate planes than us lowly enlisted pukes.

SH*T....

Bet that jumper had a sore body for a few days... after being dragged all over the pasture.

Poor bugger, he copped a hiding for sure

He only had to release one side so the canopy lost its shape, without it blowing away if he released both sides together.... one of his mates could have pulled the canopy down and jumped on it

But they kept running to him, then having to try and chase him as he got dragged, they should have gone ahead of him to where the canopy was likely to go not real bright

Question for the folks who know about jumping....

How much surface wind (knots?) does it take to cause that kind of mess?

His problem was the hot air rising off the ground, as well as squally winds converging around the trees, so it is not so much the amount of wind, it is the fact that it is not steady.... it is gusty. Also, the canopy might be a bit big for his body weight.... plus, round chutes have very little control at the best of times.... it looks to me that this guy is just fooling with some sort of oversized cargo chute.... the ropes look too long and the canopy too big for a normal round jump chute??

I watched a 110 non male personnel float up up and away at Ft Benning one day!
We all jumped out of the same plane, but she had no Assitol pills I guess.
They recovered her 10 miles away in the woods, alive but pretty shaken up and hanging upside down in a tree I heard.

USN/EOD/DV/PJ/SW......in case Red the dipshit is lurking.....

In 1984 I did a 10 jump course at Tauranga in NZ.... (where that silver xenon gyro dropped into the harbour) it was the days when you had to do 8 jumps with a round chute, The instructor on the ground had a circle with an arrow, he would point the arrow in a direction and see if you were watching and copied the direction and so on) after that, you could progress to the newfangled square ones There was a girl in the group that was maybe 80# in weight (about 35kg ) anyway, they gave her the smallest chute (round) with all of the flaps open... it was a stinking hot day, a bit windy, she got down to ground effect, her feet nearly on the ground.... then she drifted all the way across the airport towards a set of power pylons (about 300 yards)..... the main power feed to Mount Maunganui (not sure how many volts, but plenty,prolly 500,000v) ..... anyway, the drogue wrapped around the top of the 3 wires and pulled it down to the wire running below and beside it there was a bright blue and yellow flash then the sound it sounded like welding, but so loud such a deep welding/humming noise, then the drogue melted off and she dropped to the ground (only a few feet) she was ok, just scared shitless naturally..... lucky the strings weren't wet..... And no, I don't think anyone was charged (pun intended) We were a couple of hundred yards away and the hairs on your arms actually stood up when the sparks were flying.... don't know how she never got toasted

IMO she was not toasted, because there was not a complete circuit to ground. If the electricity could have found a path to ground through the cords and her body... there would have been another flash... and she would have been reduced to vapor.

There was a high power line worker in Houston Texas back in the 1970's... that got caught between a 500K volt line and the metal tower... it literally vaporized his body. Nothing left but his workboots, and they were more like a couple of pieces of burnt leather.

The 'potential' energy in electricity is not to be taken lightly (pun intended)...

There were a couple of jumpers in my class that caught thermals and rode them for a while.
You can steer a T-10 somewhat. I don't understand why she didn't pull a slip to get it on the ground.

Was I wrong in assuming he was caught up in a whirlwind?

Looked that way to me too ..... when the dust gets stirred up it looks just like a whirlwind ... or dust devil or whatever you call them.

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Learn something new every day...

Did not realize a 'dust devil' as we called them when I was a kid... could do that. I assumed it was a cross-wind of adequate force, to catch the chute and drag the person along.

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I have watched it several times and it appears the chute stays in the "vortex" of the whirlwind ..... as the twister moves along the ground it takes the chute with it ..... also watch the chute spins in a circle ... same direction as the twister

weird or what !!

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