Juliet Drop Zone

There is a little patch of land approximately 100KM north of Venice where you can regularly find people jumping out of perfectly good airplanes by the hundreds.  Juliet Drop Zone (DZ) is where the 173rd Airborne Infantry Brigade Combat Team conducts its airborne insertion training.  A common misconception is that being a Paratrooper is so much fun because you get to conduct parachute jumps on the Army's dime.  Well...like a lot of other things that would otherwise be a good time, the Army has a tendency to remove the fun aspect.  The fact that static-line parachuting involves an often painful opening shock caused by jumping out of the side door of an aircraft traveling at 130+ knots combined with the inevitable ground contact creates a situation that pretty much guarantees some level of pain and discomfort.  That being said, there is no greater deterrent to world tyranny than highly trained Paratroopers that can deploy, insert, organize, and fight under the cover of darkness.  Bottom line - within 18 hours of an enemy country initiating a severe hostile action, an entire brigade or even division of lawn darts can be raining down on them, which can be rather unpleasant for the enemy.

Although gravity does most of the work, it takes quite a bit of training and proficiency to execute large unit airborne operations with follow on combat missions.  I recorded this video and pictures from the DZ on 15JAN while fulfilling the role of Drop Zone Safety Officer (DZSO).  On this particular jump we dropped about 500 Paratroopers during hours of daylight and darkness.  The DZSO is responsible for setting up the DZ and coordinating all of the ground operations to include medical coverage, parachute recovery, and communicating weather and conditions to the Air Force pilots. 

The orange VS-17 panels on the ground are arranged in a "code letter" that points along the azimuth of flight for the aircraft.  This lets the pilot know that he is dropping on the correct DZ along the correct direction of flight.  The final confirmation occurs as the aircraft is approximately 2KM from the lead edge of the DZ (1 min before green light) when the DZSO gives the wind readings and transmits "clear to drop" to the pilot.  

It is not the nice soft landing that occurs in movies or while skydiving with steerable parachutes.  Thanks to the new T-11 parachutes we now fall at 18ft/sec instead of the extremely painful 22 ft/sec that came with the previous T-10D model. 

What am I complaining about though?  Despite all the agony, pain, and suffering associated with an airborne operation we are well compensated to the tune of $150 extra per month.  I'm pretty sure that's only about $23 more than what it was 55 years ago so maybe that just makes us stupid.  Don't go spending it all on some fancy record player...

Check out the rest of the pics HERE.