Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military
From: voder!nsc!dtg.nsc.com!worden@decwrl.dec.com (Dennis Worden)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: How to assault a tanker
Message-ID: <1990Sep24.002029.24790@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 24 Sep 90 00:20:29 GMT
References: <1990Aug28.042834.29477@cbnews.att.com> <1990Aug30.030515.349@cbnews.att.com> <1990Sep6.154605.25887@cbnews.att.com> <1990Sep14.042754.1725@cbnews.att.com>
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From: voder!nsc!dtg.nsc.com!worden@decwrl.dec.com (Dennis Worden)

With regard to landing "a parachutist" on the deck of a ship:

>Pardon injection of some reality into this discussion, but the deck of a 
>tanker is among the most cluttered surfaces on the face of this planet.  There
>are pipes, walkways, machinery...you name it, it's not flat.  This makes it a 
>hard enough place to land a helicopter, nonetheless a parachutist at night.

After 1800 skydives using modern "square" parachutes I do know that the difficulty
lies totally in the darkness, not the accuracy of the landing, provided that the
effective ground speed at landing (ship's speed relative to any headwind) is less 
than about 20 mph (a significant assumption!!)  1989 US National Accuracy Champion
deadcenter (less than 1 cm error) a target 6 times in a row. 

The problems here are in the wind speed and direction with regard to the ship
and the ambient lighting.  Its a little late to arrive at the ship and realize
the the ship is doing 20 knots into a 20 knot headwind!!!  By the way, my
experience with night landings is that if there is any light, it is almost
easier than day landings because there is  really only one place to land, and
you had better not screw-up!!!  (<:>(