Robert99

Basically, there is not sufficient information available to make a meaningful detailed calculation of this. So what follows here is the analytical equivalent of "hammer and tong engineering". During the FBI test flights, it is reported that one of the USAF parachutists did in fact walk to the bottom of the stairs. As he walked down the stairs he would also be moving toward the rear of the aircraft. This movement would cause a slight NOSE UP moment for the aircraft. The amount of this increase in moment depends on his distance from the center of gravity of the aircraft. As the aft stairs move downward, the aerodynamic force on the stairs can be resolved into two components. The component parallel to the fuselage reference line is the increase in drag. This force will be quite small compared to the overall drag of the aircraft which is probably already well in excess of 10,000 pounds. This drag force component will probably be below the center of gravity of the aircraft and will cause a slight NOSE DOWN moment for the aircraft. The vertical component of the aerodynamic force on the stairs will be up and will also cause a slight NOSE DOWN moment for the aircraft. Even with someone standing on the bottom of the stairs, where the wind chill factor is about 30 to 40 degrees below zero, the effect on the overall performance of a 727 is going to be slight and may not even be noticeable if the aircraft is on autopilot or being hand flown in even mild turbulence. We need to address a remark made by Rataczak that when Cooper jumped and the aft stairs slammed close it caused enough of a disturbance that his headset almost came off. It should be noted that the flight crew had been told by the FAA Chief Psychologist that Cooper would probably blow up the aircraft when he jumped. With this cheering news, when the stairs slammed into the fuselage and created a pressure disturbance in the cockpit as well as a lot of noise, I suggest that all four people in that cockpit did a lot of jumping thinking that the bomb had gone off.

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO SUGGEST THAT COOPER HAD ANY ACTUAL PARACHUTE JUMPING EXPERIENCE. He said he didn't need the brochure on how to use a parachute. That means only that he knew how to put on a parachute and had a one minute briefing on how to use it. The briefing for passengers on how to use a parachute was essentially just: "Jump out of the airplane, count to 10, and then pull the ripcord." No more, no less.

My post from 2011 that you quote is self-explanatory. Cooper was simply looking for two skydiver type rigs as they were widely known in 1971. Again, "front and back" was not a military term or even a civilian skydiver term in the 1971 time frame.

Nicholas, Georger, and Ollemiss are absolutely correct. "Fronts and Backs" is NOT military jargon. I have never heard that term uttered by a paratrooper or military free fall parachutist. And backpack, seatpack, and quick attach rigs, where only the harness is worn, were always described by a single word - parachutes. This thread, like a number of others on this site, is a waste of time.

Everyone needs to pay attention to what Olemiss is saying. First, on the matter of the 302's. The agent doing the interview may not have any experience in the specific subject that is being discussed. And the person being interviewed may have only very limited knowledge of the subject. The terminology they use will probably not be the terminology that an expert in the subject would use. So don't try to make a Federal case out of the semantics. Just try to understand what they are talking about. An experienced interviewer will probably approach a vital point from several different directions to make sure he understands what the subject is saying. Second, Olemiss is certainly correct in saying that the present day parachute terminology is not the same as the 1971 or prior terminology. Finally, it appears that Cooper did have some parachute experience but not necessarily as a skydiver. There is no evidence that Tina had ever seen a parachute before much less touched one.

If my memory is correct, Cooper cut about 90 feet of cord from the risers of the reserve parachute that was left behind. This is not enough cord to securely tie the money bag and also have a "drag" bag option. Also, it would not be a good idea for Cooper to tie things around his waist. He should tie them to the parachute harness. Otherwise, if he has a 10-g parachute opening shock he is going to be looking for a Chiropractor as soon as he lands. NOTE: I will make every effort to respond to FlyJack's post number 65625 this weekend. He has asked valid questions and they require a lot of writing which I don't have time to do immediately.

You are relatively new to this site so here is the sad news for you. Those of us who have been here 15 years or so have seen the same recycling of nonsense dozens and dozens of times. It has become basically a site for debating, or just plain arguing, without any real interest by some posters in solving the hijacking. Some of the debaters probably don't even know which end of an airplane takes off first. It has probably been several years since any meaningful progress has been made here relative to the hijacking. Sorry.

Olemiss, when will your book be published. I'll be very happy to buy one of the first copies.

Oh, Georger! Haven't I mentioned this to you, other posters on this thread, and everyone else on the planet, for about the last 15 years that Cooper had to land as a no-pull in a very restricted area near Tena Bar for the money to get to where it was found. The details of the above were last posted here within the last few weeks.

You are wrong. The wind would keep the stairs up. If anyone jumped from the 727 aft stairs at 325 MPH they would have to crawl through a relatively small opening at the end of the stairs.

Cooper obviously had aeronautical experience and should have known that the airflow would keep the stairs from descending very much under their own weight. Nevertheless, within minutes of Tina going to the cockpit he was calling about not being able to get the stairs opened. Exactly what his problem was is not known but presumably Tina taught him enough to get the stairs unlocked. So from about 7:45 PM until he jumped at about 8:11 PM Cooper was occupied with getting the money bag tied to himself and disposing of the brief case and whatever else he would not need in the jump. He may have had to walk down past the stairs hinge point to create enough space to get rid of those items. And he may have had to crawl down the stairs to create an opening big enough for him to jump. So he may have had some new experiences in just getting out of the aircraft.

My understanding is that the aft stairs were removed for serious Air America drops and that a metallic slide was installed down to the bottom of the fuselage. So jumpers and cargo just slid out the bottom of the fuselage. I am not aware of any information on the flap position at the time of the jump, but my guess is that it was still at 15 degrees, and the airspeed was still in the neighborhood of 225 MPH.

OleMiss is right. The airliner really did have to slow down. The NWA performance group in Minneapolis told the crew to fly at an Indicated Air Speed of 170 Knots to achieve the best range for the aircraft configuration that Cooper specified. At 10,000 feet pressure altitude with the existing temperature, that 170 KIAS becomes 195 Knots True Air Speed. And that 195 KTAS is 225 MPH. Considering the construction of the aft fuselage of the 727, it is unlikely that Cooper could stand upright or even close to it once he was past the stairs hinge point.

That is not entirely correct. Quite a few of those records were not actually lost. They were recoverable from other sources that were not in the fire. This means that there was more than one copy of many of those records and they were not in St. Louis or the fire. For instance, do you remember carbon paper? The military thrives on duplicate copies.

You seem to be unaware that the fingerprints taken by the military eventually end up at the FBI. The FBI used to be the agency that did background checks on military personnel, and they would need those fingerprints to do those checks. As a personal example, my fingerprints have probably been in the FBI data base since I was about 16 years old. I had to submit a complete fingerprint card in order to fly on military aircraft. While the card was initially submitted to the military, it almost certainly ended up at the FBI. In that time frame, fingerprints were about the only way to positively identify victims of aircraft accidents.

Yes, they did!

Meyer was a genuinely good and decent man.

There is no way to date this. It assumes that Cooper was a no-pull and died in the jump. The Western Flight Path (or whatever you want to call it) to bypass Portland on the west side would have passed almost directly over Tena Bar. Specifically, the WFP was almost straight down the center of the Columbia River for several miles. Due to the winds aloft being from the southwest at all altitudes up to 10,000 feet and of about 30 knots velocity, Cooper would have travelled about 1000 feet to the northeast during a free fall which was between about 40 to 60 seconds. And he would have landed on solid ground but very close to the river's eastern side. He would have also had to land west of the Northwest Lower River Road (which is built on top of a levee) in order to enter the Columbia in the area of Tena Bar. FWIW, the late Dr. Meyer Louie and I went through the dairy runoff settling pond (which is just over the bank from Tena Bar) about 10 years ago with metal detectors and didn't find a single thing, The detector's manufacturer indicated that they should be able to find anything up to two or three feet beneath the sand under the conditions we experienced. Additionally, local fishermen who were longtime visitors to Tena Bar told us that they had never seen the river high enough to flood the settling pond or anything from the settling pond passing into the river. All of this was discussed here in much more detail 10 to 15 years ago. To respond here to FlyJack's post of a few minutes ago, the jump time of 8:11 PM PST has been the accepted jump time from day one which was 1971. This is not a new revelation. Further, I reject the FBI's proposed flight path out of hand. No airline crew would fly like that under the hijacking circumstances. Also, the FBI's FOIA unit has gone out of their way to ensure that the actual transcripts of the communications between the airliner and the Seattle ATC are not released. And those transcripts are in the public domain.

George's premise can be expanded a bit. Assume that the money deposited at Tena Bar was still in its original but damaged bag. And assume that the damaged bag was still attached to Cooper. Several months after the hijacking and being repeatedly soaked by the famous Oregon rains, Cooper's remains, and the bills would have lost all buoyancy and been moving downhill from wherever they originally landed. That means they would be moving along the bottom. Everything hangs up momentarily at some point on Tena Bar, several packets of bills come out of the damaged bag, then the rest of the items move on downstream into the Columbia River proper, then the Pacific, and are never seen again.

So the story about the "ransom pack" of bills having been microfilmed is correct? But I strongly suspect that a machine device of some sort was used to count the 10,000 bills for the NWA ransom. Also, I read somewhere that Cooper was only given 9,998 bills. So the ransom was $40 short. Further, just because something has not been publicly released by the FBI doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. How many thousand more FBI files are there to be released under the Mark Zaid legal matter?

Also ask Carr if the money was microfilmed during the set-up of the "ransom money fund". The $200,000 for the airliner was apparently counted by some machine immediately before going to the airliner.

At this point in time, NO ONE knows exactly how the money got to Tena Bar. And we will probably never know. But if the dredge theory is correct, and I don't know one way or the other, then the money came from the shipping channel which is adjacent to the Oregon side of the river. And if the money was ever in the shipping channel, no natural process would get it.

FlyJack, you need to do your own homework on buoyancy. You don't seem to understand the term. Wikipedia has a page on buoyancy if you are interested in learning what the term means.

Rocks probably have more buoyancy than a water-soaked packet of bills. The buoyancy of rocks is equal to the weight of the water they displace. A water-soaked packet of bills doesn't displace much water at all. FlyJack, do you have any knowledge of or training in the physical sciences? I you do, how about revealing it. On the matter of money shards at Tena Bar. An FBI agent wrote a book (which I may still have somewhere) that he found shards at Tena Bar and put them in an evidence envelope. He then put his initials on the evidence envelope and turned it over to the appropriate evidence specialists.

If I remember correctly, TK said about 15 years ago that the fanning of the bills occurred just after it was placed in water and as the bills became saturated. And as the bills became saturated they sank to the bottom and stayed there. There is no natural process that would move the bills back to the surface.