Falling backwards and plunging through clouds: British paratroopers’ landing on Tristan da Cunha | British army
TAccording to Captain George Lacey, the hardest part of skydiving is falling backwards in the air. It’s Saturday and Lacey and her team of six plus two paramedics have just jumped from an RAF transport 2,500 meters above the south Atlantic.
“The parachute can only go so fast,” he says, meaning that it has to be pulled at exactly the right time. “So you have to turn into the wind and fly backwards, which, as you can imagine, is a very strange feeling.”
Below, with only its volcanic peak visible above the prevailing cloud cover, was Tristan da Cunha; The most remote of Britain’s overseas territories, population 221, normally only reachable by boat, a six-day sail from Cape Town or the Falklands.
A resident suspected of contracting hantavirus after disembarking from the ill-fated MV Hondius cruise ship last month needed urgent treatment, including oxygen. It was believed that there was only one way to deliver supplies quickly enough.
Lacey and five others, Pathfinders from the British army’s 16th Air Assault Brigade, learned they would be needed “on Thursday afternoon last week” and flew first to Brize Norton and then to Ascension Island, 2000 miles north of Tristan da Cunha, to prepare for the drop.
The six men were experienced skydivers – Lacey says he had made about 200 jumps – but they also had a doctor and an intensive care nurse with them; these would be attached to two jumpers, an extra but necessary complication. Lacey says the nurse has done civilian tandem jumps before, but this appears to be the doctor’s first time.
Together they made the four-and-a-half-hour flight from Ascension in an A400M transport, and by the time the plane was refueled midway, Lacey was confident the weather was good enough and the mission was on.
Calculations to account for wind meant that Lacey and the others were lined up for landing “about 3 miles northeast of the island.” There was little time for the crew to think (a few dozen heartbeats) when the rear of the plane opened up to the immense brightness below and the order was given.
“You’re very focused when you leave the plane,” Lacey says, arguing that her training means she’s not afraid. “You’re just thinking about exactly what you need to do next because it’s almost an overload of information and emotion.”
A nearly three-minute film taken from the helmet camera of another of the jumpers shows the irreversible moment and what happened next. The highest altitude skydivers could jump from wasn’t 8,000 feet, but it was no small deal, as the descent took “somewhere between five and 10 minutes,” according to Lacey’s memoir.
The two-thousand-foot portion of the drop was coming through the clouds – “basically you just had to follow each other the whole time” – until eventually the ground became visible. “When you came out from under the clouds, you saw the island. You knew we would land, even if it wasn’t where we wanted to be. We knew we would be absolutely safe,” the soldier says, adding for emphasis: “It’s always nice to know.”
Once on the ground, the medical team set out to care for the patient, while soldiers coordinated dropping equipment from the A400, including oxygen canisters and protective suits, so medical staff could deal with “the worst-case scenario, working with the patient continuously for several weeks.”
According to the latest official statement from the St Helena government, which includes Tristan da Cunha, the suspected case “remains stable and continues to be closely monitored” while Lacey and his fellow paratroopers from Colchester are helping out on the island by speaking to schoolchildren and the media.
Despite film and television mythology, aerial drops are very rare in war – the last mass drop of British forces was at Suez in 1956 – but there was a Russian drop at Hostomel airfield, northwest of Kiev, on the first day of the invasion of Ukraine, and there is speculation that the US will launch an airstrike on Iran if the war resumes.
“Parachute diving is something that, as has been proven, is not used very often,” Lacey notes. However, this skill is trained and developed by the military just in case against military and humanitarian emergencies around the world. “Sometimes it’s the only way to get somewhere,” he concludes.
As for getting rid of Tristan da Cunha, that will have to wait. There are exit plans in place, and although Lacey wouldn’t say, one possibility is that the emergency military team could board HMS Medway, an offshore patrol ship currently sailing from the Falkland Islands. Unfortunately, Lacey agrees that parachuting off the island is not possible.
