"Энди Макнаб. Немедленная операция (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автораso we went onto the main console instead, linking us to the aircraft's
supply. When we jumped, we switched onto our own. There were drills that we had to learn, and it was all done with big flash cards held up by the oxygen NCO. It was serious stuff, learning how to rig on to one console, then come off that and go on to your own. The next jumps were called simulated oxygen. We'd go up in the aircraft, go through all the drills, and jump with our equipment but without weapons. We weren't doing any jumps higher than twelve grand, the maximum height we could go to without oxygen. Our first lot of night jumps started, and they were wonderful-absolutely splendid. I was standing on the tailgate and could see nothing but the lights of Oxford twinkling away below me. Soon we were doing night jumps with oxygen and kit. Whenever we "jumped kit" and whenever we jumped at night, we would have an automatic opening device attached to the parachute. This worked by barometric pressure; every day a reading had to be taken so we knew the pressure at thirty-five hundred feet. I'd make the necessary adjustment so I knew that at thirty-five hundred feet the AOD (automatic opening device) was going to kick in; if I got into a spin or had a midair collision and knocked myself out, nothing was going to open; this device was there at least to get the rig up. Within the squadrons there were horrendous stories of people going into spins, especially with heavy kits. If the kit wasn't packed or balanced right, then as they jumped and the wind hit them, it did its own thing. You'd have to adjust your position to fly correctly with it. If you had wasn't done up tight, or one of the pouches on the side was catching air, that might lift up your left-hand side and you'd have to compensate with your right; you could end up flying in some really weird positions. But most dangerously, it could put you into a spin, and once that starts it just gets faster and faster. One fellow in D Squadron got into a spin, and the only way he could get out of it was to try to track to get away. He did, but all the capillaries in his eyes exploded. He looked like Christopher Lee for months afterward. We reached the point where we were simulating oxygen jumps, doing all the drills but not going high; we were doing it at night, with equipment, and as individuals. That was us ready to go to France. The French DZ had a quick turnaround because the site we jumped onto was also where the aircraft landed. In the UK we had to jump on a DZ and from there get transport back to Brize Norton; the turnaround was inefficiently long. In Pau we could jump, the aircraft could land, get us back on, and throw us back out again. We were starting now to do day jumps in teams of four, practicing keeping together, then night jumps with equipment. We started to learn how to put weapons on the equipment, first so that they were good and secure while we were in free fall and second, so we could get them off as soon as we landed. The rule within the R.A.F was that we did only three jumps a day. There was a big fear of hypoxia if we were going up to twelve thousand |
|
|