Anyone hear of any loadmasters accidentally exiting?

[GARY HILTON]

During my time in with the 101st ABN, I have heard of jumpmasters accidentally going out the door of C-130s, and getting sucked out of the C-141s...even a few fell out of the Hueys that we jumped from. Just wondering if any loadmasters ever accidently bailed from the cargo drops...and hopefully they had a chute on...

[Snake45]

I've heard stories of them going out, but tethered...followed by intercom calls of "Permission to come aboard, sir."

[CoastieJohn]

Heard of it on CG C-130's before. I know it happened on a CG HH-65A a few times. Early on, we used to have a problem with the starboard sliding door coming off the tracks as the FM was sliding it to the open position. It was a poor design. Once the wind stream caught the door, it became an airfoil and then goodbye. Your normal tendency is to hang on to the door when it comes off. If you forget to let go when the wind stream catches it, you follow the door. The guys I know it happened to had their gunners belts on and were able to get back inside the helo. Had to clean the flight suit when they got back.

[CAPFlyer]

Not a loadmaster, but this jumpmaster got sucked out on camera during a training jump -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odBuXF6dBd0

More info - http://www.dropzone.com/news/Safety/Arm ... p_257.html

[paddleblade]

A good friend of mine that I used to sit in front of in church was a loadmaster on C130's in Vietnam. The short story is a pallet got stuck going out the back of the plane with the chute already deployed. Ray jumped on top of the pallet and pushed on the side of the plane to get it out the back and unwillingly rode the pallet down to the ground. Luckily the pallet came to a stop in a clearing and Ray was unharmed. Of course this was a few miles past the drop zone and in enemy territory and with no weapons or a radio he just had to hide and wait a few days for someone to find him. I didn't find out about what he did until he and his wife decided to move to Florida. I will try and find the news paper article about it.

[Brad]

I would just nearly bet my entire life savings and two cans of beer that your friends experience never happened. First of all, as a retired Loadmasters that spent the majority of my career as an airdropper, it doesn't even begin to pass the smell test. Second, that just isn't the way things work when airdropping and certainly not the way it works when you suddenly find yourself on the ground in a combat zone.. Third and most importantly, if something even remotely close to that had happened to any loadmaster at any time in our history, it would be at the forefront of Loadmaster lore. We would have all been talking about that for years and that story would have been told and retold so many times that every single loadmaster in history would say "Remeber that guy that rode the platform (or CDS container) to the ground? He was my instructor at Little Rock." I don't doubt for a second that you were told what you have said here, but isn't even remotely true.

To answer the original question, yes a couple of Loadmasters have exited the airplane unintentionally. A few have done it on purpose.

[dirtysidedown430]

The 911th AFRES guys out of PGH INTER used to talk about that on a C-123. I know they took off side doors off from the inside and the door and whoever went out and was killed. Don't know if it was a 911th or one of the other units but they did say putting on safety web gear after that was a big big deal. On Huey's in nam we didn't use anything