D. B. Cooper

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D. B. Cooper : biography

Despite his careful planning and attention to detail, the Bureau feels strongly that he lacked crucial skydiving skills and experience. "We originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, perhaps even a paratrooper," said Special Agent Carr, the current chief investigator. "We concluded after a few years this was simply not true. No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 200-mile-an-hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and a trench coat. It was simply too risky. He also missed that his reserve ‘chute was only for training, and had been sewn shut—something a skilled skydiver would have checked." He also failed to bring or request a helmet, chose to jump with the older and technically inferior of the two primary parachutes supplied to him, and jumped into a wind chill.

Assuming that Cooper was not a paratrooper, but was an Air Force veteran, Carr believes that he could have been an aircraft cargo loader. Such an assignment would have given him knowledge and experience in the aviation industry; and loaders—because they throw cargo out of flying aircraft—wear emergency parachutes and receive rudimentary jump training. Such training would have given Cooper a working knowledge of parachutes—but "not necessarily sufficient knowledge to survive the jump he made."In Search of D.B. Cooper: New Developments in the Unsolved Case (March 17, 2009). Retrieved January 31, 2011.

The Bureau has argued from the beginning that Cooper did not survive his jump. "Diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible conditions, he probably never even got his ‘chute open," said Carr. Even if he did land safely, agents contend, survival in the mountainous terrain would have been all but impossible without an accomplice at a predetermined landing point, which would have required a precisely timed jump—necessitating, in turn, cooperation from the flight crew. There is no evidence that Cooper had any such help from the crew, nor any clear idea where he was when he jumped into the stormy, overcast darkness."It’s an Enigma." Recovered 2011-1-31.