Of course they did, both planes were filled with skydivers.
One pilot jumped, the pilot of the other plane landed despite damage to wing and propeller.
Video from inside one of the planes.
Back in the day, any jump plane with a door removed, the pilot would wear a parachute too.
Jumping Huey’s back then, the pilots did not but that was ARMY.
Mostly it was about wither a jumper could in anyway get hung and it cause the plane to be unflyable.
DC-3 & up were pretty much OK, back ramp is no problem, side door can get real exciting in something like a Beach-18.
Your altitude may vary.
Yep that’s still the case as far as I know. There’s always a risk of an early deployment leaving some skydiver’s chute wrapped around the tail-plane.
I’m guessing he put in too much aileron to compensate for the jumpers on the wing strut and stalled it.
I’m an experienced skydiver and I’ve done a lot of jumps with two or more planes flying in formation. In this case, the skydivers were getting ready to jump and most of them were already outside the planes, hanging from the strut or crouched in the door. That’s the reason they were all able to get clear and open their parachutes.
If the collision had happened while they were still inside the airplanes there could easily have been multiple fatalities. They are all very lucky but the pilot of the lead plane is the luckiest- it’s extremely difficult to get out of an airplane that is spinning towards the ground with one or both wings missing.
I probably shouldn’t speculate but I’m going to anyway. From the video it looks to me like the pilot of the trail plane simply lost track and drifted over and into the lead plane.
I’ve only gone skydiving twice…but I distinctly remember being told, once we were at a certain altitude, that we should remove our seatbelts for safety. It seemed so…odd…but (obviously) it was because we had parachutes on and could jump out if anything went wrong.
My dad was a pilot and said he never understood jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. I guess in this case he would have approved.
Cool story, saw it on the news.
In the early 70’s, I would sometimes fly an older photographer around in a Cessna 180, single engine airplane with the door off.
He was nick named ‘Hoppy’ & was an WWII combat photographer. He was still using an old ‘Speed Graphic’ camera.
He would scare the pee wadding out of me because he would take off his seat belt so he could put his leg out on the step or strut so he could get out far enough for different angle shoots. He would want me to be in full cross control flight with full flaps just nibbling at a stall condition. Most pilots will know why that was really dangerous. Non pilots just need to believe that was really stupid on both of our parts.
Flew in in the summer, winter, door off in below freezing air is not really much fun.
Anyway, one Spring flight, some turbulence cause him to almost fall from the plane. I thought he had really done it. My heart stopped. Anyway it really pissed me off and I told him if he did not keep the seat belt around him & latched, I would never take him up again.
Her always did. It was a loose as he could make it, he still leaned way out and was still one of the most fearless guys I have ever dealt with, Cool as anything, no matter what.
Sometimes the plane would come out from under us as we got too far out of the flight envelop & he would be hanging one with body parts a camera hanging out the door grinning like a fool.
Me, I was just really busy trying to recover from my bad judgement and keep myself alive. If I lived & Hoppy stayed in the airplane, it would work out OK.
The fun part of flying jumpers is you get to be a real cowboy in getting back down as fast as you can without hurting the plane or it’s engine. Fun stuff & they actually pay you to play…
My older sister had a class D rating IIRC. Whatever it was, it meant she had X number of jumps, X # with 60 second delays, X # of night jumps and a night water jump. This was sometime in the late 60’s to early 70’s.
Those ratings I did not have, color me jealous nor did I have an ATR & a single & multi-engine sea rating. I had an A&P, more hours IFR, a low altitude wavier & more night time + more different aircraft flown.
I still have never jumped out of a perfectly good airplane.
Have been the passenger in a few I wished I had a parachute because I really wanted out of them before we got anywhere near the ground …
In this situation, not having an extra person acting as a jump master so the pilot could focus on flying the damn airplane, pilot error in what was some sort of formation flight caused the mid air collision.
The were the victims of the 4 P’s.
Piss
Poor
Prior
Planning
Really glad as many survived as did.
The pilots should have known better & so should the jump club jumpers if they had any experience at all.
GusNSpot, your sister was quite an accomplished skydiver to reach that level in the late 60s/early 70s; a D license is the highest level you can get. Back then you needed 200 jumps plus some other requirements (today you need 500 jumps). Skydivers were still learning to maneuver around in freefall and link up with other jumpers to make formations. The gear was a lot different too- bulkier and less reliable.
Regarding this:
That should have been the pilot’s only concern. They were all experienced jumpers on the plane; no jump master was necessary. The pilot should not be watching the jumpers at all. His top priority is to not hit the other airplane. In the video it looks like he is watching the jumpers climb out and lost track of the lead plane.
It’s possible that the lead plane started drifting right with all that drag and weight on his right wing and over-compensated back to the left, sliding under the trail plane. But the trail pilot should be watching and give it some left if that happens. And he should never be higher than the lead plane.
We don’t know all the facts yet, and it’s difficult to tell which pilot drifted off course, but the lead pilot can’t see the trail plane. It is the trail pilot’s job to maintain position relative to the lead plane.
i heard NBC will be putting the story on Dateline
This. It doesn’t matter what the lead does. His responsibility is to get the formation to where it needs to be. It is solely the trailing pilot’s responsibility to maintain formation no matter what, and to execute a breakout maneuver if he loses track of the lead. It seems pretty cut and dry - this accident rests 100% on the shoulders of the trailing pilot. I would be surprised if his certificate isn’t suspended or revoked for careless and reckless operation.
It was no longer a perfectly good airplane. 
Here’s a link to the Dateline report that apparently aired last night. It’s multiple video segments, each around 6 minutes long. Each segment loads automatically when the preceding segment ends.