DB Cooper

[snowmman 3]

This is just some fun photos.

I've been browsing a photo album with shots from Special Operations evidently in the Vietnam forces.

Not clear what years. But interesting photos.

Found a nice photo of a C-47 skyhook evidently?
labelled:
SkyHook / TRIET XUAT Douglas C47 / LONG THANH VIET NAM / TRUNG TAM HUAN LUYEN YEN THE LONG THANH
at:
http://news.webshots.com/photo/1046092500031690022RGgJGg
photo attached

also some nice photos of evidently Vietnamese spec op parachute training? (attached)
from the same album. The parachute landing doesn't look like vietnam though.

[377 22]

FINALLY! I trust Leekers research. He is an expert on SE Asia air ops history.

Here is his reply to my inquiry:

Thank you very much for your e-mail. I don't know about the hijacker you mentioned, but Air America's/SAT's 727s were used for tests only, as it seems. This is a sentence quoted from my file about Missions to Tibet: "Later, the 727s were even tested at Takhli for air drops with conveyer belt and rollers, because the aircraft could be pressurized until the drop, but although the system worked well, it was never used in operation.[1]" In the documentary Flying Men, Flying machines you can see drops made from one of the 727s.

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[snowmman 3]

Quote

FINALLY! I trust Leekers research. He is an expert on SE Asia air ops history.

Here is his reply to my inquiry:

Thank you very much for your e-mail. I don't know about the hijacker you mentioned, but Air America's/SAT's 727s were used for tests only, as it seems. This is a sentence quoted from my file about Missions to Tibet: "Later, the 727s were even tested at Takhli for air drops with conveyer belt and rollers, because the aircraft could be pressurized until the drop, but although the system worked well, it was never used in operation.[1]" In the documentary Flying Men, Flying machines you can see drops made from one of the 727s.

377

excellent info 377.

The documentary you mention is available for download at
http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/AirAmerica/FMFM/index.htm
evidently.

I'll download it and see if I can get some snips of the drops mentioned.

[snowmman 3]

The Flying Men, Fighting Men documentary is excellent.

I downloaded the 150kbps version (89.9MB)

At 1 hr 8 minutes, the video of the 727 air drops starts.
It's excellent. Shows the roller delivery method and door exit and chutes deploying from 727.

Shows kickers wearing parachutes as they do the drop

ALSO SHOWS JUMPERS SLIDING DOWN THE RAMP. and the parachutes deploying behind the 727.

This has to be the first 727 jet jump????!!! Not Cooper??

I'll try to get the video snip of just this section.
Maybe I can get some stills and that will be sufficient.

This is amazing.

(edit) at 1:08 the voiceover, who appears? to be the managing director George Doole of Air America, says they own and leases seven 727's to other operators. Yokota, Japan is mentioned. Southern Air Transport.

[snowmman 3]

Okay this isn't the best selection of frames, cause I did some fast snaps while viewing.

But I'll post enough so you can see the air drops and the jumpers. Again this is starting at 1:08 in FMFM

[snowmman 3]

again from starting around 1:08 in FMFM

I don't know if the jumpers are static lining it, but the chutes are deploying right away?

(edit) Yes? even a whuffo like me can see the yellow static line criss-crossed across the back of the container in the first attach as the guy's going down the ramp. So a 727 has been static-lined!? agree/disagree?

I think that might discount the idea that Cooper would have been hurt by an immediate deploy out of the jet exit?

Isn't that correct? There are better views in the video. should get better frame by frames in my video editor of the jumper jet exits

[snowmman 3]

Trying to research this FMFM film

from
http://www.utdallas.edu/library/collections/speccoll/Leeker/laos2.pdf

"...Flying Men, Flying machines made in 1970/71. Although the purpose of this documentary is unknown, the tendency to underline Air America's purely humanitarian activities is obvious"

So: I think we can say the flight tests were done before Cooper's jump. It's possible the film was available somewhere on the planet before Cooper's jump, also.

(edit) Humanitarian stuff was organized under USAID in Vietnam. I wonder if USAID personnel might have seen this film. It would be nice to know where and how it was distributed in '71. Or was it purely CIA internal?

[snowmman 3]

Okay, one thing we can theorize about, is that the '70/'71 727 jumps were static line, and the door was removed. So there was no information about opening the door, or the pressure bump, available from that test or that test film.

I can't tell what the flying configuration was. It's possible the information in the transcripts about speed and flaps, is from test data on this flight that made it's way back to Boeing somehow?

So it's possible that Boeing itself never did the air drop tests we see discussed in the transcripts. They might have got the info from Air America at Takhli. Based on Leeker's email, the tests were evidently done at the Takhli air base in Thailand?

Probably everyone talked about it cause it would be big bragging rights for jumping the 727?

So anyone passing thru or at Takhli then, might have known?

[snowmman 3]

The film makes a point of saying that the 727 could be flown pressurized and then depressurized for the air drop. (or was this info just from Leeker, based on the 9/8/85 Thomas C. Sailer interview by William M. Leary? I have to watch the video again)

That means it's saying the 727 door could be opened in-flight right? 377 brought up the idea of how do you know if there's some kind of interlock that can't be overridden.

So it's not just telling us that an air drop/jump is possible.

It's telling us that the cabin can be depressurized..i.e. that the ventral exit door can be functional and opened in flight.

[snowmman 3]

background info on the guy that ran the show.
rehash of stuff we know, but I hadn't read about Doole before.

Air America got shut down finally on June 30, 1976 when it sold all it's planes for $20M. 200 personnel lost over the years, and 36 aircraft.

Doole retired in '71.

from
http://www.air-america.org/Articles/Doole.shtml

Officially, the CIA says it has no record that Doole ever worked there, but among old agency hands, he is a legend.
...

Owned by a holding company, the Pacific Corp., that was itself a CIA front, Doole's empire included Air America, Civil Air Transport, Southern Air Transport, Air Asia and dozens of small puddle-jumper lines. Together, at their peak in the mid '60s, these CIA "proprietaries" added up to an airline that was almost the size of TWA, employing nearly 20,000 people (as many as the CIA itself) and operating some 200 planes. Even the CIA was not sure just how many.

Asked by then Deputy Director Helms to account for all the planes in Doole's regime, a staffer spent three months on the project before confessing that he could never be more than 90% certain. The problem, explained the exasperated staffer, was that Doole was forever leasing planes between his shell corporations and changing their markings and tail numbers.

Traveling around the world, orchestrating his vast air armada, Doole kept his airplanes busy. Under the cover of legitimate freight and charter services, Doole's airlines supplied a 30,000-man secret army in the mountains of Laos for a ten-year war against the Pathet Lao, dropped scores of agents into Red China, and helped stage an unsuccessful revolt in Indonesia. Not surprisingly, all this flying about aroused curiosity. In 1970 a New York Times reporter asked Doole if Air America had any connection with the CIA. "If 'someone out there' is behind all this," Doole airily replied, "we don't know about it."
...

Doole's pilots, who flew in and out of tiny jungle fields in abysmal weather and sometimes under enemy fire, were a raffish lot. They referred to the CIA as "the customer," the ammunition they dropped as "hard rice" and being under heavy fire as "sporty." Brushes with death were described as "fascinating." To be "absolutely fascinated" meant scared witless.

Doole would appear from time to time at CIA bases from Vientiane to Panama City, but he stayed aloof from the pilots, many of whom regarded him as a bit of a snob. "I never saw the man without a tie on," scoffs one. Doole played bridge, flew airplanes and did business deals the same way: slowly and deliberately. "The Chinese liked to negotiate with him," recalls a former CIA official. "He was polite; he never showed any excitement. But he was tough."

When the extent of the CIA's covert operations was revealed by newspaper exposés and congressional hearings in the early '70s, the agency was forced to dismantle Doole's huge aerial empire and sell off the various planes and airfields. It was done at a profit; the agency turned over $20 million to the U.S. Treasury. Doole also did well by himself. Though he earned a government salary as a CIA employee, he augmented his income by investing, shrewdly, in the stock market. His estate when he died was worth "several million dollars," according to a sister.

...
In 1971 Doole retired from the CIA. Formally, that is. He kept his hand in the aviation business as a director of Evergreen International Aviation, a company that refits and charters airplanes. Though Evergreen bought Intermountain Aviation, one of Doole's CIA "proprietaries," in 1975, the company insists that it has had nothing further to do with the agency. Perhaps. But when the dying Shah of Iran wanted to fly from Panama to Egypt in 1980, he flew on a chartered Evergreen DC-8. Doole arranged the charter.

[377 22]

This info HAD to be circulating in Viet Nam. Anytime jumpers jump something new, word gets out. There is even a guy on dropzone.com who jumped a Russian TU 95 Bear!

Wonder who the 727 jumpers were? The Air America pilot I spoke with who knew zero about 727 jumps had himself hauled indigenous paratroopers over Cambodia for low level S/L jumps. Were these Thai paratroopers perhaps? US military?

The Air America system looks like it worked really well. The NWA 727 jump would have been a lot less scary if you had the information in the film. It would tell you to ask for about 20 degrees of flaps and to deploy immediately. You could also freefall but why risk it if you knew you could safely deploy right out the door? I wonder what the airspeed of the Air America 727 was when dropping S/L jumpers?

Sluggo. What does an immediate deployment do for your track?

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[snowmman 3]

Quote

Sluggo. What does an immediate deployment do for your track?

377

Ckret provided weather info but his scans were unreadable.

If you believe in ESE winds near PDX like I do, and 60 knot winds at exit to 20knots surface wind, for 40knot avg, you get close to the 8 mile canopy ride I mentioned right? I know it sounds insane, but if you were drawing a buffer area around the flight path...I would go 8 miles in all directions (since wind speed and direction are kind of poorly known?)

(edit) maybe go to 9, to account for flight path uncertainity. Also the descent rate was probably closer to 1200 ft/min?, so maybe 8 miles is excessive.

(edit) oops I said ESE. I probably meant SSE. I forget what my favorite was back looking at the wind rose (historical probability) thing I posted back in the thread.

[377 22]

If it was raining and winter you can COUNT on Southerly winds. SE S SW and even ESE but not NW.

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[snowmman 3]

The Nash equilibrium may sometimes appear non-rational in a third-person perspective. This is because it may happen that a Nash equilibrium is not Pareto optimal.


(edit) 377: I may have forgotten my favorite wind direction based on that historical wind rose I posted way back. ESE does sound too E. Maybe I meant SSE. I forget.

[georger 258]

Quote

This info HAD to be circulating in Viet Nam.


Reply> did you read my post? I may know nothing
but I tell what do know from reliable sources. I
am talking about Lt Col's retired USAF.



Anytime jumpers jump something new, word gets out. There is even a guy on dropzone.com who jumped a Russian TU 95 Bear!

Wonder who the 727 jumpers were? The Air America pilot I spoke with who knew zero about 727 jumps had himself hauled indigenous paratroopers over Cambodia for low level S/L jumps. Were these Thai paratroopers perhaps? US military?

The Air America system looks like it worked really well. The NWA 727 jump would have been a lot less scary if you had the information in the film. It would tell you to ask for about 20 degrees of flaps and to deploy immediately. You could also freefall but why risk it if you knew you could safely deploy right out the door? I wonder what the airspeed of the Air America 727 was when dropping S/L jumpers?

Sluggo. What does an immediate deployment do for your track?


377

[georger 258]

Quote

If it was raining and winter you can COUNT on Southerly winds. SE S SW and even ESE but not NW.

377

225-235 degrees was already established.

[georger 258]

Quote

FINALLY! I trust Leekers research. He is an expert on SE Asia air ops history.

Reply> Leekers? You mean Lurkers? Yes, beside
Geoffrey Gray and Galen Cook my leekers/lurkers
say 2-3 more books are being written! Are you one
of these? The hedge fund is larger than I thought. Everyone wants in on the action. Jo is probably going to publish now also - almost forced to or forever hold her "piece". This is getting exciting!

Georger


Here is his reply to my inquiry:

Thank you very much for your e-mail. I don't know about the hijacker you mentioned, but Air America's/SAT's 727s were used for tests only, as it seems. This is a sentence quoted from my file about Missions to Tibet: "Later, the 727s were even tested at Takhli for air drops with conveyer belt and rollers, because the aircraft could be pressurized until the drop, but although the system worked well, it was never used in operation.[1]" In the documentary Flying Men, Flying machines you can see drops made from one of the 727s.

377

[377 22]

Good one Georger! Pretty soon we can start a book of the month club, all Cooper all the time for a year. How many will there be total if Galen and Geoffery publish?

No, no books or movie deals here. This is just entertainment for me, not a vocation or get rich quick endeavor.

Jo publish??? I thought she was as non commercial as I am. Surely you jest. I think Jo is after truth not money, even if her perceived truth (Duane was Cooper) differs substantially from ours.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all! Anyone besides me see a Cooper-Saint Nick allegory? Oops, there I go again, thinking of Cooper as a basically benevolent guy. Ho Ho Ho? No No No!

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[snowmman 3]

Cooper is worth less than the idea of Cooper.

I'm always surprised when people don't realize ideas are more valuable than anything tangible you can touch.

Once it's just something you can touch, it's commodity.

The physical Cooper is just commodity. nickel and dime. Another one born every minute.

gotta run. Going to edit and get the 727 airdrop snippet up on youtube for the bandwidth challenged.
Oh snowmman you humanitarian!

[377 22]

Quote

Oh snowmman you humanitarian!

Indeed! Nothing abominable about our Snowmman... when he is in a good mood.

Pre Cooper 727 jump evidence has definitely put our Snowmman in a good mood.

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[snowmman 3]

Okay, I snipped and uploaded it to Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrqdmXxBZjI

Comment there, or here, with insight!

I think it's pretty good. about 2 1/2 minutes.

I noticed there are two static line jumpers. I had thought the no-helmet guy was just jumpmastering. But it appears he jumped too! maybe he got carried away with the moment. No helmet, no jumpsuit, no goggles? Not sure if he's the 2nd jumper though. What think?
He's in full-on Cooper mode: short sleeve white shirt.

(edit) It looks like the two jumpers may have been the loadmasters for the pallets??

You can see the impact they get when the air stream hits them. The 2nd jumper is going fully horizontal with his deployed chute.

Attached snap of that for fun.

In the mass pallet drop, each pallet has two parachutes?

Ckret has said Boeing had data from a "food drop" test.
If the pallets are food, I guess the jumpers are the chefs!

[wolfriverjoe 1,523]

Nice job on the video. It's interesting to see what might have happened that night.

The pallets have 2 canopies each because of the weight. When they drop really big stuff (the Russians used to drop armored personnel carriers - with the crew in them) they add more.

Notice how the "horizontal jumper's" canopy is opening. A while back, there was some discussion about round canopies "squibbing". Not opening fully until they slowed down some. That appears to be happening in the video. I think those jumpers would be sore from the hard openings, but the traumatic injuries from a 727 hop & pop are probably not going to happen. If Cooper went out the door with his hand on the handle, and managed to execute the pull, I think he would have been ok.

"There are NO situations which do not call for a French Maid outfit." Lucky McSwervy

"~ya don't GET old by being weak & stupid!" - Airtwardo

[377 22]

Thanks Snow, great job. Amazing footage!

What type of aircraft is shadowing the 727 during the drop sequence photos? Almost looks like a Twin Beech (Beech 18 or USAF C 45) in which case the airpseed was SLOW, probably just under 120. Could it be a small jet? T 39? Any opinions?

The horizontal displacement of the jumpers is no huge deal. Looks to me like a reasonably non violent jump. CRW dogs, what do you think?

Man what a SLICK airdrop system, fly en route to the DZ pressurized, high and fast (727s are among the fastest jet airliners ever made) , descend and depressurize, open the door and drop a load of pallets and/or jumpers, button up and go back high and fast. The system appears to have worked really well.

Fedex ought to consider it. Why land at Memphis and then send some stuff back to places you flew over when you could drop stuff off enroute? GPS steered ram air chutes can deliver cargo to precise landing points.

So Cooper could have easily known about these jumps and therefore been confident that he could escape from a 727 by chute. Georger had heard of the 727 drops from Nam vets. I think it was known to a number of people outside of Boeing's engineering and flight test departments. Certainly many within Air Amerca knew. Do we believe that such an effective systeme was never used operationally? Maybe...

Once Snowmman gets a lead he digs deep and relentlessly, Sluggo and Georger too. Let's see where this goes.

Gentlemen, start your search engines.

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[snowmman 3]

Okay, now we're searching for a couple things, in addition to what 377 mentioned (major props to 377 for the Leeker info).

Ckret has gone missing. Not clear who has nabbed him.
But Tom Kaye still has Cooper bills. They're each worth $2-$3k. So Ckret will likely show up to reclaim them at some point.

Tom K: That's when you have to nab him. 4 days of loud Nine Inch Nails and no sleep, should be enough to get the truth out of him. It's not torture, so go for it.

The Night Clerk: Last sighted at Portland FBI office. May frequent Chinese restaurants. Details on getting English teaching jobs at this site may help find him, since he is supposedly on the run back to China.
http://beijing.usembassy-china.org.cn/teach.html

Jo: The Ringleader. Should be considered insane, therefore very dangerous.

Duane: Sold life insurance to the static line jumpers in the 727 video. Therefore must be considered primary suspect.

[georger 258]

Quote

Good one Georger! Pretty soon we can start a book of the month club, all Cooper all the time for a year. How many will there be total if Galen and Geoffery publish?

No, no books or movie deals here. This is just entertainment for me, not a vocation or get rich quick endeavor.

Jo publish??? I thought she was as non commercial as I am. Surely you jest. I think Jo is after truth not money, even if her perceived truth (Duane was Cooper) differs substantially from ours.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all! Anyone besides me see a Cooper-Saint Nick allegory? Oops, there I go again, thinking of Cooper as a basically benevolent guy. Ho Ho Ho? No No No!

377

4, 5, 6, 7? potentially. Forgot one maybe two more.
8? Unreal.