DB Cooper

[snowmman 3]

Bruce reported "“He was a piss-poor leader,” Hetrick said. “We did a lot of trail-walking,”


From reading Plaster, this is my impression:

Trail walking was bad because it increased your chances of running into NVA, since they used the trails. And "making contact" with NVA was generally a bad thing..you were supposed to gather intel, and once you made contact, it was all about evasion and getting away. (and probable firefight)


It was harder to go thru the jungle, but safer.

There were some accounts of a 1-0 actually taking his team on a fast march on a highway, in daylight, while being chased, which people really couldn't understand. But the added speed helped evasion. And the NVA didn't expect it.

The 1-0 argued back, when told it was stupid: "Well I'm still here"


The other problem with the trails, was that the NVA, once they found the RT team, would run down trails they knew, and get ahead of the team. While the poor RT team would be running thru the bush.

[snowmman 3]

Bruce said "Braden resigned his officer’s commission, Hetrick said, over a fuss over blousing dress blues with jump boots, or something like that."

from my reading:

Blousing is when you tuck the pants such that the boots are fully exposed.

Cooper didn't blouse :)

Different ways to do it I guess..from a forum:
"In the Marine Corps, we used boot blousers. They're little elastic cords, or big metal springs if that's your style, that you hook together around your calf. You tuck your pant leg up into it from underneath; people have different ways of folding/managing excess trouser to get the proper amount of blousing and trouser length.

Some people/organizations blouse the trousers around the upper of the boot, some just above the boottop. I think the Army does something different, involving the trouser actually being inside the boot, but I'm not sure exactly what the procedure is.

If you don't have boot blousers available, a big rubber band can stand in; you just have to slip it over the boot from the toe (or over the boottop before you put it on). You can get blousers from a military exchange; I imagine they're available online somewhere, too."

http://www.911jobforums.com/archive/index.php/t-52429.html

[snowmman 3]

it would have been nice to ask Hetrick what he remembers of Braden's height and weight. We don't have an estimate on that yet.

[georger 267]

Those jumps in 1971 had the stairs removed, and a ramp inserted.

I don't know where people are getting this possible prior knowledge of pressure bumps from, in 1971.

[georger 267]

Quote

Quote

Orange, as an economist and jumper you'd love this. The DZ just lowered the ticket price to $17 in an effort to get more market share. The benefits of having 6 DZs in the area are amazing.

Microeconomics 101

Do you know game theory? Can you do calculations
in it?

[georger 267]

Quote

Quote

Maybe an accomplice was staying in the area waiting for him to call or use his 2 way radio he powered with the battery in the brief case?

Jo,

By most accounts that bomb battery was a large 1.5 volt dry cell. It would not have been suitable for powering a two way radio. Ask any of the amateur radio operators who post here which include all your favorites, even Sluggo, Snow and Georger.

You need a higher voltage than 1.5 volts for two way communication radios. I have never seen one that ran on 1.5 volts. 12 volts is common. You could make a converter but it would be a crazy idea with two six volt lantern batteries being widely available and easily connected in series for 12 volts.

I'd love to think Cooper had a radio transceiver but I see zero evidence that he did. The battery is not a two way radio battery, believe me.

377

QRP only... imho.

[georger 267]

Quote

Recap on Ted Braden, August 18, 2009


Today, I interviewed Jim Hetrick, leader of the national SOG organization, about Ted Braden. He had some very strong opinions about Ted

“I don’t like the man,” Jim Hetrick said. “I have no use for the man, no respect for the man, and he came close to getting us whacked by doing a lot of dumb-assed stuff.”

Jim said that Braden was his team leader in RT Colorado, long after the time of Don Duncan, who Jim Hetrick doesn’t care for, either. “He’s (Duncan) not welcomed around here, or with the SOG guys – he’s a real b**l s**t artist.”

As for Braden, Jim said Ted was just out for himself, and was dangerous to run an operation with. Braden took numerous unnecessary risks.

“He was a piss-poor leader,” Hetrick said. “We did a lot of trail-walking,” which I take to mean roaming in the jungle and risking exposure instead of sitting put in a observatory position, concealed and safe.

“I disliked the man tremendously,” Hetrick said one more time.

Hetrick also said that Braden worked a lot of angles.

“You can make up any story about Ted Braden and they could be true.”

Hetrick said that when Braden went missing in Vietnam, the SOG vets all thought that he had “gone over” to the North Vietnamese.

Hetrick also said that when RT Colorado came back from a mission that, unlike all the other recon teams that would de-brief at Saigon HQ together, Braden would go to Saigon alone for the de-briefing.

“He’d fly back in a CIA airplane and it would waggle its wings to let us know that Braden was back and that we’d have to go down and pick him up.”

Hetrick said that Braden liked to “hang with the embassy-types,” and that he often wore a short-sleeved white shirt and tie, and would “hang in the CIA bar in Saigon” (the Caravelle?).

“He could have been building deep-cover – who knows?” said Hetrick. Like I said, you can make up any story about Ted Braden and it might just be true.”

After Ted disappeared, Hetrick said that another SOG vet saw Braden sitting four rows ahead on a train in Thailand. He said Braden turned at one point and looked the guy straight in the eye, but never acknowledged him or gave any response or recognition.

“Maybe Braden was running drugs,” Hetrick said.

Hetrick said that just prior to Braden’s going missing in Vietnam (Hetrick never once said ‘AWOL’ or ‘disserted’) Braden was charged with the murder of an “RFP in Hue and was placed under house arrest.”

He subsequently was transferred out of SOG into Project Omega, which was then absorbed back into SOG under an Op-35 arrangement, or something akin to that.

Just prior to all of that, Hetrick said that SOG CO General Bull Simmons began to suspect Braden was falsifying his singular after-action reports, so he assigned a Navy Seal to “run with us” in RT Colorado.

“I later learned the Seal was an Intel guy and was sent to check on Braden,” Hetrick said.

Hetrick said that the Seal refuted Braden’s accounts and that Braden was discredited. Then Braden was sent to Project Omega.

Hetrick said that Braden was rumored to have passed a lot of bad checks before he left. Also, Hetrick knew that Braden had a wife, who lived in Florida, and he went to see her after he left Vietnam and they had a kind of spree.

Braden resigned his officer’s commission, Hetrick said, over a fuss over blousing dress blues with jump boots, or something like that.

Braden was highly provocative and argumentative - even violent. Once he spit in the face of the company commander, and the two had to be physically separated.

“He was bad news when he was drinking,’ said Hetrick. “I know – I used to be a drinker myself, but Braden was different. He’d get squirrelly. He was a wild man when he was drinking.”

Further, “He was a crazy man,” said Hetrick. One of my friends was surprised to see me still alive after he had been away from camp for awhile – he was so sure Braden was going to get me killed.”

Lastly, “I don’ think Ted Braden was DB Cooper. He didn’t look at all like the sketches I saw of DB Cooper.”

interesting - self serving bastard just as I thought.
People like that are still useful when turned.

[snowmman 3]

georger said "interesting - self serving bastard just as I thought.
People like that are still useful when turned."

I might be misinterpreting what you wrote georger, but there's an interesting hypocrisy in what you wrote...which reminds me of the hypocrisy of the vietnam experience.

A society that would think "People like that are still useful when turned" maybe deserves the cynicism and self-interest-only that Braden displayed. It's very Nixonian style thinking. (edit) I'm assuming you're implying "useful to the U.S."? Maybe you meant "useful to the people in his unit?"..I'd hate to be thought of as "useful" though.

In the context of what was going on, Braden may have been exactly right.

Remember, we don't know the full story on Braden yet.

He was there, at the outset, at Leaping Lena. These other guys weren't. If we're right, Braden volunteered, young, for WWII.

You can decry Braden the mercenary thinker. But the US was paying Nungs and Montagnards as mercenaries..not even bothering to remember all their names when they died. They were just Yards. Some probably still kids...less than 18.

Me: I think I don't know Braden's story yet. I'm hoping Bruce can find it.

When I look at those pictures of Braden demonstrating all the various turns and stuff, for skydiving, in '61. I have a hard time imagining him as the asshole. Maybe he was then also.

I don't know.

(edit) movie quote, Staying Alive
"Who do you think you're dealing with? Some little groupie who jumps when you call, is this who you think I am? We met, we made it, what do you think it was, true love? And you say I used you but what about you using me? Everybody uses everybody, don't they?"

[snowmman 3]

Bruce mentioned the Caravelle.

attached is a photo taken at the rooftop bar of the Caravelle Hotel, circa '64-'67.

377 will like that the the guy in the photo was a radio DF analyst.

2nd photo is from the same time: "Rooftop view of Saigon, with spires of Notre Dame and national radio (?) tower in background"

[nigel99 607]

Quote

Quote

Nigel99 - What I was wanting was feed back from Jumpers of if it was feasible to jump from that position and what would the consequence would have been. Would it have increased his survival rate?

Let's see what Nigel says but from my experience (1 DC 9 jet jump on a nice sunny day in Illinois carrying only five twenties) it wouldn't have made much difference if I went out facing forward or rearward. Just get clear of the plane without snagging anything, arch hard to get stable, slow down to terminal velocity and pull. No special exit attitude or posture needed.

I looked up after my jet exit and saw a few experienced jumpers go unstable immediately after leaving the plane. Some were flipping and spinning, but they arched and within a few seconds they were belly to earth in stable freefall.

377

377 you guys have got alot more experience than me so you should comment.

Jo - personally I don't believe that the direction you are facing makes any difference to survival rates when exiting from the rear of an aircraft - PROVIDED that you are not deploying instantly. I have only exited a CASA (tail gate) and saw people doing handstands off the ramp, diving, facing forwards, backwards etc and after about 1 second it really makes no difference. If static lining or deploying immediately on exit then you should be stable. A very good friend of mine did a static line jump from a tailgate and was unstable and managed to get the main wrapped around him - luckily it was at 8000 feet and his reserve somehow made it through - the point is that instability can kill you and it is knowing "how" and when to deploy not simply how you leave.

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[377 22]

Tailgate S/L jumps at 8000 ft?

Tell us the rest Nigel. What other crazy stuff do you guys do over there?

That main body wrap sounds terrifying. Round canopy?

377

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

[nigel99 607]

Quote

Those jumps in 1971 had the stairs removed, and a ramp inserted.

I don't know where people are getting this possible prior knowledge of pressure bumps from, in 1971.

Ckret maintained the "pressure bump" was caused by the stairs flapping back up after C's weight was
off the stairs.

But we have a second pressure effect caused
by people parachuting through open holes in
a moving aircraft, whether side hole or rear hole?

377 chime in ???

[nigel99 607]

Quote

Tailgate S/L jumps at 8000 ft?

Tell us the rest Nigel. What other crazy stuff do you guys do over there?

That main body wrap sounds terrifying. Round canopy?

377

He was an air force cadet (about 16) and the air force sport jumpers didn't like to bother putting him out before their run. The main was an LR288 (square).

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[377 22]

Just a guess but I think the stair rebound would create a more noticeable pressure event than an exiting jumper would alone.

Cooper's exit may have been the first airborne 727 stair rebound ever.

377

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

[Orange1 0]

Quote

Quote

Quote

Orange, as an economist and jumper you'd love this. The DZ just lowered the ticket price to $17 in an effort to get more market share. The benefits of having 6 DZs in the area are amazing.

Microeconomics 101

Do you know game theory? Can you do calculations
in it?

I studied game theory, and I used to be able to do calculations in it back in my university days, but not now. Had enough prisoner's dilemmas to last me a lifetime.
Beyond the basics (laws of supply and demand and competition theory) i'm afraid i found microeconomics rather boring...
Luckily economics is a huge field and i found plenty other stuff to interest me

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[georger 267]

[reply
Do you know game theory? Can you do calculations
in it?

I studied game theory, and I used to be able to do calculations in it back in my university days, but not now.

Then there are two of us. Im in the same boat.
The last I remember are all the weighted vectors
expressed as arrows where direction of arrow
represents some decision making direction in a
series of decisions results in some outcome.
Length of the arrows/vectors proportional
to the probability of making some particular
decision ... I have wondered a number of times
if game theory would help in the Cooper matter
but am indecisive........ maybe Safe will take this
up (right down his alley)...

what do you think? is it worth trying?

[georger 267]

Quote

Quote

Those jumps in 1971 had the stairs removed, and a ramp inserted.

I don't know where people are getting this possible prior knowledge of pressure bumps from, in 1971.

Ckret maintained the "pressure bump" was caused by the stairs flapping back up after C's weight was
off the stairs.

But we have a second pressure effect caused
by people parachuting through open holes in
a moving aircraft, whether side hole or rear hole?

377 chime in ???

From standard theory when an object is inserted into a moving fluid a pressure wave is created. The size of the object, speed of insertion and speed of the fluid all affect the magnitude of this wave. If you visualise throwing a pebble into a stagnant body of water it will form circular ripples (pressure waves), do the same into a flowing body of water and they will become elliptical - the point is that the pressure waves travel in all directions and simply get swept along/distorted by the moving fluid.

You can hear jumpers leaving any aircraft - how large the pressure wave is and whether instruments detect it is a different matter. I think it is safe to say that the stairs would make a larger impact than a person, and conceivable the two events would merge if it occurred as stated by Ckret.

[Orange1 0]

Georger, you can ask safe, but one of the reasons i didn't like micro much (apart from all the math )was because of the idea that you could express how people "should" behave in terms of a mathematical equation and assume all sorts of things on the basis of that.. so as you can gather i'd be sceptical that game theory (or any of construct) can tell us. After all this was part of what got Khaneman his Nobel - the fact that people don't always act in the way that theory predicts? (OK, so they created prospect theory to deal with it, but let's not go there...)
In fact it may have depended entirely on the way Cooper himself perceived the risks, which may not be the same as what we perceive them to have been. If we ask the question the wrong way, we may get a different answer. see eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudocertainty_effect

(btw, i'm one of those people who takes the data and sees what it tells me, rather than try make it fit a theory that i think "should" work

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[nigel99 607]

Georger,

Provided the door is open you have a state of equilibrium and there is no airflow into the aircraft. There is obviously turbulance at the rear of the aircraft - but you will find that in most case inside the plane it is quite calm. I tried looking at my text books when I had a minute earlier today but couldn't bring myself to going into the details of whether the rear of a 727 constitutes a large or small oriface, I kind of felt like Jo with the dogs oriface.

A thought just occurred when reading your summary

Quote

As I see this we have three effects:

(bump) from stairs slamming back up closing
the rear hole changing the pressure differential

(oscillations) not sure that was ever nailed down...

(swoosh) change in pressure differential from
a large object exiting the plane like someone
parachtuing out the plane ...

A plausible explanation is that Cooper went onto the stairs and deployed at the TOP of the stairs = bump as stairs slam back up, but because of the deployment position (top of stairs) the parachute hangs up on the stairs = oscilations, whoosh parachute fails/clears the snag and cooper dies. This could provide an explanation for the 3 events.

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[georger 267]

Quote

Georger, you can ask safe, but one of the reasons i didn't like micro much (apart from all the math )was because of the idea that you could express how people "should" behave in terms of a mathematical equation and assume all sorts of things on the basis of that..

I argued these same points endlessly as a student.
My prof just laughed. I said: "people are not rats".
He just laughed. It turned out on a statistical basis
he was correct. People often are predictable...

But I know "exactly" where you are coming from
and what you are saying. My prof finally said to
be: "your point of view is that of a french
rationalist - you are a Humanitarian!". He was
a German empiracist and from a mathematical
point of view the sob was right! Those classes
sobered me up ...

[377 22]

Quote

Provided the door is open you have a state of equilibrium and there is no airflow into the aircraft. There is obviously turbulance at the rear of the aircraft - but you will find that in most case inside the plane it is quite calm.

On the unpressurized DC 9-21 jet jumpship the cabin had no rushing air at all, very calm even during jumps. The only anomoly was the "whoosh-thunk" mild but very noticeable presure bumps as each jumper exited.

377

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

[snowmman 3]

orange1 said "Georger, you can ask safe, but one of the reasons i didn't like micro much (apart from all the math )was because of the idea that you could express how people "should" behave in terms of a mathematical equation and assume all sorts of things on the basis of that.. so as you can gather i'd be sceptical that game theory (or any of construct) can tell us"

there are other problems
1) A systems's ability to enforce the "rules" is always flawed. Game theory needs to take that into account. (think of flawed court systems; lax enforcement of stock market "rules", etc)

2) In reality there is no such thing as absolute standards for benefits to individuals. It's all relative.

3) It's always different in South Africa.

4) The best strategy is always the one that's not been modelled by anyone yet. Once it's modelled, it's predictable. A predictable strategy is no longer optimal, since others will try to take advantage of the prediction. See "the stock market".

5) The Ted Braden effect. Hetrick, a rational player, assumes any possible behavior for Braden is possible..i.e. Braden has superpowers relative to what Hetrick believes people normally expect from people.
The thing is: is it a Braden effect, or a Hetrick effect? Can't tell, since it's all relative. No absolutes.

[Orange1 0]

Quote

I argued these same points endlessly as a student.
My prof just laughed. I said: "people are not rats".
He just laughed. It turned out on a statistical basis
he was correct. People often are predictable...

[snowmman 3]

Quote

Quote

I argued these same points endlessly as a student.
My prof just laughed. I said: "people are not rats".
He just laughed. It turned out on a statistical basis
he was correct. People often are predictable...

Law of large numbers. Predictable on the average, but no-one would go so far as to say you could predict every individual.

Incidentally technical analysis is, at its basis, predicting human behaviour. I've seen someone use Elliot wave analysis to predict - correctly and right in front of me - the behaviour of people at a rock concert!

[Orange1 0]

Quote

Quote

Quote

I argued these same points endlessly as a student.
My prof just laughed. I said: "people are not rats".
He just laughed. It turned out on a statistical basis
he was correct. People often are predictable...

Law of large numbers. Predictable on the average, but no-one would go so far as to say you could predict every individual.

Incidentally technical analysis is, at its basis, predicting human behaviour. I've seen someone use Elliot wave analysis to predict - correctly and right in front of me - the behaviour of people at a rock concert!

free choice is limited in such a venue.
It's easy to predict the behavior of prisoners in a prison also.
Or people driving cars on a road.

The problem is when you can convince large numbers to throw away the existing constraints. Just reject them. That's what causes unpredictable. The box gets thrown away and replaced by a different box.

Predict the next revolution.