• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

Army parachutists transform routine with their focus

Photo Gallery

Southern Wisconsin AirFest

View Gallery

JANESVILLE — It’s 11:30 a.m. Saturday, and the runway at the Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport is a distant memory.

From 13,000 feet in the air, in the cabin of a C-31A Troopship—a hollowed-out, civilian-style airplane equipped with canvas seats, metal shelves, and straps and buckles galore—nine members of the U.S. Army Parachute Team are preparing to jump.

The air is 35 degrees Fahrenheit. The oxygen is thin. The jump aircraft’s rear doors are wide open.

Below, the Southern Wisconsin AirFest crawls with activity, but the airport looks like a toy model dotted with miniature, multi-colored cars and aircraft.

The parachute team, known as the Golden Knights, move about the cabin freely. Dressed in black jumpsuits with gold embroidery, the team members converse, give high fives and shout cadences.

One peers serenely from a port-style window, as though he’s riding the subway to work. He yawns.

The team may look nonchalant, but they’re focused.

In a few minutes, they’ll coordinate a jump that leaves team members linked hand-to-leg in a formation as complex as a snowflake. From there, they’ll fling open their parachutes and float to the ground, landing in front of AirFest’s crowd on a target the size of a pizza box.

“All I’m thinking about right now is how many people are down there. I’m representing the U.S. Army, and if I mess up, the Army looks bad,” Sgt. Trevor Oppenborn, 24, tells a Gazette reporter over the roar of the plane’s engines.

A few of Oppenborn’s team members crouch at the open doors near the back of the cabin, dropping paper streamers to the green ground below. They’re measuring wind drift.

As the plane climbs, its two pilots make passes over the parachute team’s drop area. Team members crouch by the doors, using thumb signals to show pilots their landing coordinates.

“It’s like piloting a plane from the back,” Sgt. Brandon Valle, 25, said.

Saturday, the winds were calm with few gusts, which made it easier to calculate the jump, team members said.

Hitting a target the size of a pizza box takes special people, and the Golden Knights are just that. They’re an elite group who undergo a strenuous tryout and training process that takes months.

Sgt. Brandie Phillips, 23, said she’s been on several hundred jumps with the Golden Knights. She was a medical technician before she tried out and made the parachute team a year ago. She said every jump is different, and she approaches her work like a professional athlete.

“This is honestly the best job I have ever had,” Phillips says just before she leaves her seat to line up with team members at the back of the cabin.

Then a team leader gives the signal.

As the team jumps through the doors, the wind draft slams into them at 120 miles an hour, literally sucking them out of the cabin.

It’s like a scene from a cartoon. One second they’re there. The next, they’re gone, leaving behind a trail of red smoke swirling from canisters bracketed to their ankles.

Empty of its jumpers, the pilots bank the plane hard over Janesville, down to the heat of the airport runway.

Just before landing, the pilots buzz past the crowd, giving fans one last view of the ship that drops its Knights from the sky.