These guys are the best of the best!!
Posted on 02/13/2008 5:00:34 PM PST by decimon
CASA GRANDE, Ariz. -- A Virginia Beach-based Navy SEAL was found dead Wednesday morning on a golf course in Casa Grande.
The SEAL, whose name was not released, was a Special Warfare Operator from Hampton Roads, Va. He died while conducting a parachute training operation out of Marana, about 30 miles south of Phoenix.
The body was found near one of the greens shortly after 7 a.m. by a Mission Royale Golf Course maintenance worker on his morning rounds.
Casa Grande police said the Navy arrived immediately to retrieve the body.
"I was just coming out of the garage and I heard this noise," said Jesse King, a neighbor.
Another resident also said he didn't know what to think.
"It's kind of tragic really, the way you hear how it happened and everything," said Ron Horton. "It kind of affects you a little bit."
The Navy is investigating the SEAL's death and said it may send a team to Casa Grande later in the day.
Authorities said they are trying to notify the man's relatives before releasing his name.
RIP, Patriot.
There is safety and medical personnel everywhere. All jumpers must be accounted for. If anyone is missing - it is a major event.
There is something not right about this...
oh no
RIP. Tragic.
How awful.
SOCOM Ping
Total malfuntion and reserve entanglement? High speed freefall collision? Not enough facts yet. Landing far from the LZ means he probably had no canopy. WE’ll find out soon enough.
I agree. Sometimes these units are "OFP" and maybe a little too "OFP" and nobody else knows what they're doing. Still, there are always other team members who should know. According to the story, the body was found by a maintenance worker and the Navy arrived immediately. I sure hope they were already well on their way and didn't have to get a call. The story isn't clear.
Strange and tragic.
Billy Machen Ping
It just breaks my heart when a Special Operator dies. They aren’t suppose too, that is one of the reasons they are special.
Special ops guys are dying all the time. This is a “world war” for those guys. There is nothing limited about this war, if you are in specops. The number of EOD guys who have died......
I agree with you. It does sound fishy.
Almost makes one wonder if his last name wasn Obama, what with him giving the Clinton’s a hard time.
My sympathy goes out to this guy’s family and friends. I will also watch for a follow-up to see what happened.
Years ago the “Christians In Action” had a remote section of Marana to “mothball” aircraft?
These guys are the best of the best!!
How sad—prayers for his eternal soul....
Casa Grande and Marana are about 40 miles apart. Is it possible that he would be that far off course??
Are these special ops types allowed to go jump on their own at your local jump school like say Skydive Sebastian?
Just curious.
Real tragedy,prayers for him and his family.
Whatever the circumstances, God rest his soul and my best salute to him.
I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane five times, and I hated every minute of it. I never, repeat, never want to do that again. It’s not natural.
A search revealed other news coverage of this but nothing with more info.
From another news source: "Navy spokesman Lt. David Luckett said it would be at least 24 hours before the name of the service member would be released, pending notification of next of kin.
Luckett said the victim’s military job designation was as a special warfare operator assigned to the east coast unit. He said the incident is under investigation."
"special warfare operator" means squat so the Navy is just not saying anything yet.
This is very sad, RIP. My parents actually live in that community on that golf course. I don’t know if they saw anything.
Perhaps a high altitude jump and the oxygen not working? So no deployment?
Do these folks use automatic openers?
I jumped some in the early 80’s, but nothing adventurous.
Sad. RIP young brother in arms, you’re in the hands of God now. I wonder if he was testing out new equipment in conducting the training?
How sad. Prayers.
The airfield they probably used is the AZ ANG training site at Red Rock, north of Marana, exit 225 or so on I-10. If the golf course is actually in Casa Grande, then it's up past exit 196...31 miles from the airport. If it's the golf course along the interstate in Arizona City/Eloy, that's at exit 203 and is only 22 miles away.
Either way, even speeding, I don't think they're going to to arrive on the scene immediately. Deduction is that a ground crew was in the area of the drop zone at the time of the accident.
Evergreen Air still runs a major part of the Marana facility.
It was just a wierd info release.
I'll ping you if I see anything else and please do the same.
200 jumps from 1992 to 1998. I’d do every one of them over again...I liked it....hey, I loved it!
They can't. They must learn specifically what went wrong to prevent another deadly accident. Unfortunately, he can't be interred by the family until the investigation is completed. About one third of casualties in Iraq and Afgan are from aircraft and heavy equipment accidents. Ships, too. It's very fast and dangerous with a narrow margin for error.
The victim died after plunging to the ground near one of the holes at the Mission Royale Golf Club.
Police Cmdr. Scott Sjerven said the death occurred during a SEAL training exercise. He said the investigation into the death, which occurred about 7:15 a.m., was being handled by the military.
Television station KSAZ-TV in Phoenix reported the victim was from Virginia and had been participating in a training exercise based in the Marana area, north of Tucson.
The area specialises in HALO jump training (High Altitude Low Opening) and also in night operations.
Both Marana Regional (AVQ) - the site of the Osprey crash - and Pinal Airpark - site of Evergreen Aviation (MZJ) are listed as being in the town of Marana, and are both used for military training. Casa Grande town is about 20 miles from Pinal, which is home to a large National Guard Complex (and black helicopters - for real...:^)
If you zoom in, you can see the base, the Evergreen “bone yard” and even the Rutan-designed scrapped Beech Starships.
http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=32.51624,-111.325536&spn=0.024861,0.033002&t=h&z=15
We will have to wait for more details.
RIP for a brave soldier.
The jumps started at 6:00 a.m. An hour later, one of the men fell to his death.
Casa Grande police say two calls came in: one from a cell phone, the other from a groundskeeper who spotted the body on the greens.
Golfer Gary Hess arrived during the commotion. "As we drove up, we saw what looked like a big plane with four engines and four propellers flying low."
Other golfers are stunned. "We're really sorry about it," one golfer said. "It's not something you ever want to see happen."
Mission Royale is a brand new development just south and east alongside the interstate where I-10 and AZ287 (Florence Blvd) intersect at mile marker 194.
Peace to the soul and family of this brave Patriot Sailor.
The flip side is that if these training incidents don't occur, training must not be rigorous enough.
Low altitude jumps always have a high pucker factor but I doubt they would have done a low altitude jump over a residential area.
He may have done everything perfectly but sometimes, when it's your time, it's your time. Think bird strike before the chute deploys as an example.
Any number of things, yeah, know what you mean.
Someone said HALO is practiced there - the -130 would be high for that. My guess is what that witness saw was the aircraft circling the accident site as a marker for the investigation/ground crew. Just a guess, of course.
I had a partial malfunction and a reserve entanglement on a jump (civilian). It was my Dads birthday and I remember praying not to die on his birthday as I tried to clear the mess.
36 years ago. My hands are sweating.
Hoo-ya shipmate from a old Leap Frog.
Chute failure, or failure to deploy, for some reason. Not all that uncommon.
This note on Airnav confirms the parachute high and low training ops...
- EXTENSIVE MILITARY PARACHUTE TRAINING HIGH & LOW LEVELS ALL HOURS.
- PARACHUTE JUMP AREA LCTD W OF RY 12/30.
- EXTENSIVE MILITARY HELICOPTER TRAINING 0700-2300 EXCEPT HOLIDAYS.
...from here...
http://www.airnav.com/airport/KMZJ
Sunrise is 7:11 am (local) at the airport (again, from the Airnav link), so 6 to 7 am operations would be in the dark.
When I was with the 2/1 Cav Black-Hawks back in the mid 70’s, there were several accidents during training at Ft. Hood. But to qualify that, there were practically no conditions that we would not work in, on the ground or in the air. And I dont think we were 'spec ops' although we came in close contact with them. I never knew what that (MACV SOG) patch stood for until much later.
My initial thoughts were that this was a HALO accident, but considering the excerpt above, it sounds like a static line operation. The C130's fly at 1200ft for static line drops.
RIP Sailor
87 jumps from ‘87-’99; 86 of those jumps were night jumps (eyes closed)
Nothing fishy here. Night HALO jumping (high alt. low opening) is inherently dangerous. Where they jump out of the plane is many miles from their LZ. A number of things can result in a loss of consciousness at high altitude. Then the victim falls to the earth far from the LZ.
It’s not just war that is dangerous for these guys. Training is dangerous. Another SEAL was killed 2 weeks ago in Missouri doing close quarters battle training.
I don’t know if they use automatic openers today.
Golf course wouldn’t be the drop zone (I wouldn’t think, but then again, who knows what innovative training SEALS were performing), so I suspect he aimed there after discovering his fate. There are worse places to suffer the first death than the links.
I suspect the HALO incident first, with a flyby afterwards. If a low altitude SEAL jump, by C-130 over a residential neighborhood/golf course, I’d shoot closer to 500AGL.
That reminds me of something my uncle said a while ago, when being picked up after a flight - it was the only time he'd flown since he'd been in WWII and said that was the first time he'd landed while still IN the plane. (shudder)
I’ll bet you don’t forget one of those!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.