For example, see the thread about the novice climber who died trying to climb Grand Teton.
I would have to quibble with people whose speculation that he died once on the ground is based on obvious points like the fact that it was a wilderness, and the weather etc.
The fact is that Cooper clearly put a lot of thought into the parts of his plan that were witnessed, and it doesn’t jibe with the rest of his MO to assume he had no plan for the post-landing portion beyond a vague “then make my way out of there”. It’s extremely likely that the weather abd terrain that everyone points to had not escaped his attention either,
Which is not to say that he didn’t die, either. What he did was in any event very risky, and sometimes risks don’t pan out. But since no one knows what the second part of his plan might have been, it’s difficult to make an educated guess as to the likelihood of its succuss.
I thought he was wearing some sort of overcoat. Which would make sense, since he originated in Portland - it’s not like he started off in Southern California.
It makes sense to assume that he was dressed for the weather on the ground, if not for the jump.
You’re right, he did put a lot of thought into his plan. But all that went out the window when it turned dark and the clouds rolled in. If he couldn’t see where he was when he jumped, the chances of him landing anywhere within several miles of his intended landing area were very slim.
Maybe he had someone waiting on the ground with a walkie-talkie. The odds of him landing within its range were almost zero. Maybe he had a car parked somewhere. Again, the odds of landing anywhere near it were almost zero. Unless he had a compass and a flashlight, it would have been difficult to even know which direction to start walking. He couldn’t navigate by the stars, it was overcast. He was probably in a fairly remote area, it could have taken hours to even find a road, especially if he was injured.
I think he never even managed to open his parachute. If he did, I think it is extremely likely that he suffered some major injuries on landing, making it very difficult to go anywhere. If exposure or hypothermia didn’t kill him, he died of hunger or thirst.
I really think that he landed in the river and died.
Assuming that he could steer the chute a little during descent, a river at night is going to look like a big clearing. Or maybe it was just bad luck. The Columbia is pretty wide near Vancouver.
The money that the kid found was likely deposited on the bank as part of dredge spoils. The dredges are always working the river to keep the channel open and pumping the sand back out on the banks.
This is one of the simplest explainations.
I’ve seen this said a few times now, but knowing nothing about parachuting, I don’t understand why. What’s so hard about opening a parachute, and why in this case would you guess that he couldn’t?
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I’ve seen this said a few times now, but knowing nothing about parachuting, I don’t understand why. What’s so hard about opening a parachute, and why in this case would you guess that he couldn’t?
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Because of the speed of the plane. You normally jump out of a plane going at a much slower speed. This plane was going at over 200 MPH, IIRC. Just think about the shock of jumping out of something going 200 MPH and being hit with the shock of the wind as all that drag you were being shielded from by the plane hits you instead. It would be ugly.
That’s not to say that you couldn’t do it (you are, after all, also traveling at 200 MPH), but it would definitely be a shock, especially when you tossed out your parachute and it then took that additional drag of your body moving at 200 MPH. It’s all do-able (as Gonzo pointed out, people have recreated it, and I think Bumbershoot claims to have done it himself 3 times), but at night and in inclimate weather…well, the chances for something to go wrong are pretty high.
-XT
It was not an easy jump. But it has been demonstrated many times. It is doable. That does not mean he made it. But his remains were never found after a hell of a lot of looking. Many people wanted to be the one to find him and they also have failed. A chute is a pretty big flag to find.
But he probably would not have opened the chute at 200 mph. My rough estimates are that in the first second he would have slowed down by 60 to 80 mph (I figure drag on a human body at 200 mph would be 3 or 4 G’s), and then he’d be down to normal freefall speed in four or five seconds.
The question is whether that initial blast would have caused him to tumble. Seems likely to me, jumping off the rear stairwell as he did. The violence of tumbling in a 200-mph wind seems like it would easily knock you out.
I’m also left wondering about that descent down the rear stairwell. Was it just the weight of the stairwell that would normally hold it down, or were there hydraulics? At 200 mph, wouldn’t the airstream hold it up so that it was barely open? What about the idea that as he was going down it, the airflow made him lose his grip/footing, so that he tumbled down it and hit his head before ever clearing the plane? Actually, that seems to me to be a major problem in pulling this off.
Oh, and a spelling nitpick for xtisme: it’s inclement weather, not inclimate.
The speed of the plane is part of it. He would have flipped head over heels several times from the wind blast (I think he probably flipped and spun until impact). He could possibly have found his handle and deployed while flipping and spinning, but it’s very difficult to do. If he did deploy while unstable he had a very good chance of snagging a line on an arm or leg or part of his container, preventing the parachute from fully opening.
The cold is another factor. It was 19F at 10,000 ft. according to the flight records. Add in a 200 mph wind chill. Cooper wasn’t wearing gloves, goggles or any kind of head cover. The shock of the cold air would have caused him to tense up. It is very difficult to get into a stable belly-to-earth position when you’re tense and stiff. Learning to relax in freefall is one of the hardest things for low-time jumpers to learn.
It was pitch dark and he wasn’t wearing goggles so it would be very difficult to see his ripcord handle. His fingers would get cold and numb very fast from the wind chill. He could easily have fumbled blindly for his handle until impact.
And yes, xtisme, I do claim to have jumped out of a 727! 3 times! 
I guess I can’t prove I did it. I do have some photos of me in the plane, and a video I took on my second jet jump (I did skydive photography for a few years) but there’s no way to prove it’s me.
The tumbling probably wouldn’t knock him out, but it would be very disorienting. Combined with all the other factors he could have experienced sensory overload and done absolutely nothing until impact.
I don’t know much about the stairwell, it was removed on the jet I jumped from. They nailed a sheet of plywood over the stairs inside the plane, making a ramp to run down and dive out.
No one is saying it wasn’t doable. I said it’s possible he survived but extremely unlikely.
Whole airplanes have crashed into remote areas and not been found for months or years (Cite).
The first person the FBI looked at was a local resident named D.B. Cooper who was almost imeadiately ruled out. They figured the most obvious place was the best place to look first. This is how the wireservices confalted the names “Dan Cooper” and “D.B. Cooper”.
No one on the flight crew was with the highjacker when he jumped. They were all in the cockpit. They did feel and bump from the tail that could have been from him exiting the plane, but by the time they got to Reno and were able to review they were not quite sure when in the flight it happened. This is the reason one of the security changes made to planes was installing a peephole on the cokpit door so the crew can view the cabin from the cockpit without opening the door.
This youtube clip is of 1970-1971 footage of B727 parachute drop tests. Note the extreme slipstream effects on the jumpers. Quite a ride at night, over an overcast layer, without a static line or goggles. Moreover, the parachute he was believed to have used had an extra-heavy pull and required an “out and up” motion(per the dropzone thread I’ve cited already, quoting Crosley, the parachute purveyor the FBI/FAA got Cooper’s chutes from. The thread is gigantic; I believe the info is somewhere on page ~25 of, no shit, 1060. I’d use “search”.) Pulling on the rip cord and not having it open would not help Cooper relax in freefall…
I am not a parachutist, and I really like Bumbershoot’s knowledgeable contributions to the thread. It seems fantastic and unlikely to me that he could have gotten oriented and deployed his chute, given the conditions and his apparel. As already stated, a “no-pull” situation would result in a much smaller footprint, particularly if he landed within a brushy area. Bumbershoot, if you had to put a Vegas line on it, what do you think are the odds Cooper could have deployed his chute and landed w/o immediately killing himself?
That said, given he asked for the money to be delivered at 5PM, and twilight was at 4:59PM, he was committed to a night drop, whatever he did. I cannot imagine why he would not have waited until he oriented himself for his drop. He gets the doors open at least by Toutle. Why not jump then? Why wait? The only orientation that makes sense, with an overcast layer, and if you discount the “innovative” VORTAC course change theory, is to wait until he sees the lights of Portland. At that point, he’s over farmland, roads, and civilization. If he’s near enough to Portland, he might think that he’d have sufficient light under the layer to see a little bit once his canopy opened, and thereby orient himself. Or he was just a neophyte airplane enthusiast or airplane manufacturer employee who had utterly no idea what he was getting into.
From what I’ve read, the bump/pressure drop near Ariel was the only such bump/pressure drop during the flight, and was nearly identical to similar effects noticed during the later parachute sled tests. We have the crew’s testimony as to when the bump occurred, as well as their transmission of “Cooper doing something with the air stairs” and that IIRC, went into the FBI’s drop zone search map. Of course, if their estimation was off by a few minutes, that changes where Cooper could have dropped.
In the dropzone thread—which really is interesting reading, if you’ve lots of time—the thought of the discovered money being placed there by a dredge is advanced. My thought was that the money was in too good of condition for that to be the case. I am certainly not a dredging expert or a hydrology expert, but I would have thought the dredge would have shredded any bundles of bills. Also, the bills were discovered on top of a layer of sand that was thought to be deposited in 1974. As the hijacking happened in 1971, this is a problem. A thought on that thread was that the bag of money was separated from Cooper, somehow, made it’s way to a lake feeding the Washougal drainage, and slowly, over 8-9 years tumbled down the Washougal to the Columbia. At that point the bag fell apart, and a bundle made its way out of the bag, to be discovered at the Tena Bar. This seems rather unlikely to me, but what other explanation is there, given the drop zone parameters and the fact that the Washougal is roughly 10 miles + from the zone?
I hadn’t read the other D.B. Cooper thread, Bumbershoot, so didn’t realize you’d already linked to the dropzone threads I’d mentioned. Your description of them can’t be beat.
I’ve always wondered about an “inside man” at the airline.
Plane data?
Air routes?
Procedure?
Someone to pick him up?
Yeah, I remember when Jo Weber started the first thread. I followed it pretty closely for a while but eventually got tired of all the shit. I stopped reading before Agent Carr (Ckret) got involved.
Twilight was at 4:59 pm, huh? I didn’t realize it got dark that early in November. That does shoot down my theory that Cooper never expected to jump at night.
I forgot to mention the likelihood of a lost handle in my earlier reply to this- although I did mention it in post #112, where I said
Date Sunrise Sunset Length of Day
Nov 21, 2011 7:18 AM 4:35 PM 9h 17m 13s
Yeah, I’m not used to those day lengths either. I was quoting someone from the dropzone thread, but figured I needed to confirm here. Surprised me, even though I’ve visited relatives in Seattle in the summer, when they didn’t have to turn on playing field lights until nearly 10 PM.
I scanned in some old photos in case anyone has doubts about my claims of skydiving experience:
Here is an exterior shot of the jet that I jumped from in 1993. It was a cargo jet, so the windows were covered over.
Here is an interior shot. I cut off the bottom half of my head taking the self-portrait, but that’s me! (Note the covered windows)
Here I am on a different jump, grinning and waiting for the other jumpers to join the formation. I usually had a smile on my face in freefall.
Here I am hanging from the wing of an upside-down biplane.
Here I am diving through a hula hoop.
Here is the Indiana state record for largest formation (78 people). I’m on the lower left side, in red and light gray. My right hand is gripping the leg of the guy in white in front of me.
This whole thread is speculation treated as fact. Nobody really knows if he made it. He may have. Was he an expert jumper? He was for the first couple decades, now he isn’t any more. Day or night? Does not matter, he jumped. Cold ,could have not pulled chute, pure speculation. They never found him or his chute. That part is fact.
That is why we are fascinated. He may have pulled it off, and so far, no one can prove otherwise.