Airborne Soldiers

For John, BLUF:  Life can provide surprises.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

This is an amateur video, showing someone we assume to be the Jump Master,♠ kneeling on the ramp of what we assume to be a C-130.  The Jump Master appears to be looking for visual clues as to how close they are to the Drop Zone (DZ).  Then, it appears, the reserve parachute deploys.  It looks like he was taken by surprise.

Someone commented:

Yup, he has a long walk to the DZ.  At least he was on a ramp and not JMing a Huey or Blackhawk.♥  The rear rotor sometimes hurts.

There is that line about how stupid it is to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft.  My own experience is that I have never jumped out of a perfectly good military aircraft—Dollar 19s only.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Bing has a Dictionary.  The Jump Master is "somebody in charge of parachute jump: somebody who oversees military paratroopers or civilian parachutists and decides when they will jump from an aircraft".
♥  That would be acting as Jump Master on a helicopter like the UH-1 or the UH-60.