Tragedy at Kiel
Exercise 'Bold Guard' was a NATO exercise involving German, Danish, and British forces in which elements of the United Kingdom Mobile Force as well as those of the UK Joint Airborne Task Force (UKJATFOR) were being trained in one of their possible war contingencies. On Tuesday morning of last week at 04.50 hours the first of two pre-planned paradrops took place: thirty-five aircraft of 46 Group RAF dropping men and heavy equipment of Second Para Battalion Group, some 500 men and over twenty heavy loads consisting of guns and vehicles. This drop was done at an average height of approximately 650 feet above ground level, and was, except for 'sticks' from two aircraft, accurate. About twenty men from these two aircraft were carried by the crosswind and landed in a beech wood just off the dropping zone (DZ). Of these men, five were injured and two, unable to get down, were winched out upwards through the tree canopy by helicopters of the German Army an operation of some skill.
The second drop involving men and equipment of Fifteen (Scottish) Para Battalion, with others from Seven RHA was to have taken place on Wednesday morning. This was postponed because of local fog over the Kiel Canal to 20.00 hours the same day. The DZ was immediately south of the Kiel Canal, with its north limit about 350 yards from the bank. The run-in was north to south; that is to say, the aircraft stream flew over the canal before the drop. In the event, at least fourteen men and three heavy drops landed in the canal Which had, at the time, normal ship traffic moving up and down. What went wrong?
Forty-six Group have already initiated a board of enquiry and we may be confident that this will be extremely searching and the cause of the accident will be identified. But some questions will require answering. Why, for instance was the DZ sited so close to such an obvious hazard presented by the seventy-five yard wide Kiel Canal? Why, when the heavydrop extractor equipment is designed for a drop height of about 650 feet, was the drop done at 1,000 feet? It has been established that the wind that night was blowing south to north, i.e., towards the Kiel Canal. Clearly, the drift effect was underestimated, and the increase in the drop height will have magnified this error. It seems that those who actually dropped into the canal were the leading numbers from 'sticks' from a series of different aircraft, so blame, if blame is to be apportioned, will probably not be laid to any individual pilot. Nevertheless, it does appear that an error of judgment in a number of areas may well have taken place.
One must, however, hope that whatever the outcome of the Board of Inquiry, unrealistic training restrictions are not placed on military parachuting, In the meantime, while our sympathy goes out to the families of those who were killed in this exercise, we should be thankful for those civilians, in this case from Scotland students, shopworkers, ship builders, etc who are prepared to give up their time in order to make a real and continuing contribution to the United Kingdom's Mobile Forces which are earmarked for possible use within the overall NATO area.
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