olemisscub

He was 71. We sure he only went to the bathroom once in three hours? And yes, I’m aware of what his 302 says. Just saying…guy was pretty old.

I'm curious about this statement from Gregory. Makes me wonder if Gregory passed Cooper during the drink ordering process before Coop put the shades on or if this was actually at some point during the hijacking.

Yes. It’ll be Cooper canon soon.

Cooper clearly had some skills with knots and stuff. What I’m really suggesting is that he has some sort of ADHD or spectrum type behavior. It’s like he became laser focused on this dumb bag. Some weird OCD thing. I just don’t think there was any real risk at all in demanding a knapsack. Would have taken mere minutes. They had already given him 200k. I don’t think there would have been a risk of shennanigans taking place over a knapsack.

One thing I’ve come to realize lately is just how different Cooper is once he gets his money. He becomes a different dude almost. A good example is how stupid he is when he doesn’t demand to receive the knapsack. He spends an hour and a half wasting time playing with nylon cords when all he needed to do was say “Hey, get my damn knapsack” and they’d have grabbed it off some kid in the airport and given it to Cooper in five minutes. Cooper kind of becomes a passive actor in many ways once he gets the money.

It was surely already written. It was in an envelope. He was smart enough not to leave his envelope inside the terminal like McCoy did...

Yeah, I knew about the multiple discrepancies. Very frustrating. I'm just going to roll with the print followed by cursive as well.

What do we think this description of the note means? It's written rather wonky. Is this saying that MISS was the only word in print and the rest was in cursive? Or does the "was printed" line mean the agent trying to say "all caps" before that phrase was in the vernacular? In other words, do we think it is option 1 or option 2?

Freaking Mac. He never disappoints.

ouch. That one is tough.

There were lots of those orange and white chutes found. It's my understanding that orange and white canopies usually indicate a weather balloon. However, they should have at least taken a look at it to figure out the size of the thing.

Chaucer knows the details of this better than I do.

Well it’s not just the ones that made it all their way to the FBI but there were other reports of chutes that weren’t passed along by local law enforcement for being outside of the original DZ i.e. “thanks for the call but the FBI are searching about 10 miles north of here.” There was one in particular that was spotted by a Vietnam vet who was fishing next to the railroad bridge across from Portland. He and a friend saw a conical white chute snagged on one of the pilings floating in the water. They reported it to Vancouver PD who apparently failed to notify the FBI about it.

I’ve compiled a pdf of all the found parachutes and I didn’t find any that I thought seemed possible. I can’t recall the particular one you are talking about. Post it if you have it handy please.

I'd be totally shocked if WWII Air Crew or pilots actually knew anything about canopy size. Found this about RAF training in WWII for a Lancaster bomber crew. "He was ordered to climb on to a five-bar gate and jump off. On hitting the ground, he should count to five before drawing his hand across his chest to simulate pulling the ripcord. This was, he felt, less than adequate preparation for saving his life in an emergency. Nor did he recall at any stage of his service being told how to leave a stricken aircraft." From a book on the 8th Air Force: "Parachute training for 8th Air Force crews was nothing more than usual instructions on bale out procedure: intercom verbal signals, one steady ring of the emergency bell, or just 'use your own judgement'" Book about 15th Air Force: "The thought of bailing out also terrified many airmen, to the point where they chose not to think it could happen to them. There was little or no parachute training."

That’s aviation related and while our chopper crews didn’t normally wear parachutes they 100% had training with them. I’ve verified that. I can put a parachute on every copycat while they were in the military except for Mac and he’s somewhat tricky. I know he has told you and I that he never put on a parachute while in the Navy, but maybe his memory isn’t so good. He had 2,000 hours in the air. He absolutely had put on a parachute in training before. Hell, even at his trial a fellow squadron member testified that they had it.

Yes, was not a paratrooper. He was in the Army Air Corps, US Naval Aviation, or the RCAF during WWII. Not many things I’d bet good money on in this case but that’s one of them. Literally all of my personal “canonical six” copycats had a background in military aviation. Given Cooper’s age that means WWII military aviation.

I knew you were right when I thought about that, so see my edit I made.

How the hell would I, or Cooper, know how big trackers are? Come on. And about the "inspection and packing data", maybe that's what Cooper saw while looking for trackers in the folds of the chute, not that Cooper checked in that pocket for a tracker and then suddenly found the packing card. Maybe he was like "oh, inspection and packing data, let me check in here and see what I can find out"

I’d make the argument that he may have just happened upon the packing cards while inspecting the chutes for trackers. Probably more likely that he hung around a DZ on occasion (perhaps as a pilot) and just knew that packing cards were a thing.

I’m doing a FB live with Mark soon and we’ll be sure to discuss it. He said he wouldn’t jump with a 24 footer for a million dollars. He did give that a caveat and say that he’s older these days and he would have done it for money when he was younger but he said 24 foot canopies are bad news. I’ve reached out to several of the skydivers on the FB group and they’re all in agreement that he had a high likelihood of injury landing in a 24 footer at night. Mac’s canopy was a 24 foot front reserve and he suffered a pretty major concussion when he landed. He was so concussed that instead of escaping the DZ he crawled under a tree and slept for something like 12 hours. To your point about getting down faster, I can’t recall the exact calculations but I ran some figures through AI and if you were 200lbs and opened a 24 footer at 10,000 it would take like 8 1/2 mins to come down and with the 26 footer it was like 10 minutes and 15 seconds. Not sure if those extra two minutes would be worth the risk of injury. I believe Cooper was a complete novice and chose the pack he jumped with merely because it was newer and for no other reason. He likely didn’t understand the difference in the canopies were that dramatic.

Yes that’s possible. Aside from the canopy size being wrong (Cossey’s fault), the majority of the early confusion with the chutes was just the FBI not understanding the nuances of parachutes. They interpreted the luxury pad business to mean that the one he left behind was a civilian rig, which to them meant a skydiving rig (you know this, of course). The first outright lie I caught Cossey making was to the Seattle Times in 1976 when he claimed that one of the chutes was returned to him and is now a “treasured souvenir”. It wasn’t until his 2003 interview with parachutist magazine that he started making up the bullshit about it being some tricked out “B-4 sports rig” with a special hard to find rip cord, as if he’d have given such a thing to Hayden.

fwiw, the difference in a 24 foot conical canopy and a 26 foot conical is 100 square feet of surface area. 24 has 576 square feet and 26 has 676 square feet of surface area.

I don’t believe in conspiracies like uncle Bruce. If Hayden said he didn’t talk to them he’s misremembering. We have the “receipts”, as you like to say.

Well he sure as shit talked to them when he was trying to get his chute back. The real question is where did that packing card go. Was hoping that it might have been in the 1A envelope, but now with the latest vault we know that it’s not in there. It was probably still in Hayden’s chute when he got it back. Probably shoved it in a drawer somewhere and forgot about it. Lost to history now.