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The Luckiest Green Beret of Vietnam…
Near California City, CA
January 13, 1983
Duty, Honor, Country…
During the United
States' involvement in the 2nd
Indochina War (also called the Vietnam War), it was a military policy that,
after a soldier received multiple awards of the Purple Heart – the decoration
for combat injury or wound – that said soldier would be sent out of the combat
zone. The idea was to spread the harm more evenly across the members of the
military services. However, some soldiers bucked the policy by not reporting
trauma up their chain of command.
Joseph Svec was one
of those soldiers. A trained paratrooper, he served with U.S. Army Special
Forces, commonly referred to as the “Green Berets” for the distinctive headgear,
Svec likely participated in some of the most secretive and difficult missions of
the conflict, often times behind enemy lines. Before he departed Southeast Asia,
he had received seven Purple Hearts, but received wounds for many more (rumored
by some to be near 20).
Ultimately, he was
injured to such a point that he was med-evac'ed out, and taken to Tripler Army
Medical Center, located in Honolulu, Hawaii. There, he made a full recovery, and
shared some of his insights and humor by working for the Honolulu Star Bulletin
as a political cartoonist and writer.
Pull!
But he maintained a
strong interest in parachuting. In the late 1970s, he returned to the sports
while living in the Houston area, and quickly became a major figure in the
United States Parachuting Association – being elected as Conference Director, by
write-in, in 1978, and National Director in 1980. He also competed on various
jump teams, and served as Leader of the U.S. National Skydiving Team which won
numerous gold medals at the World Meet in Zephyrhills in 1981. He was also a
great advocate of the sport – funding other people's skydiving teams when they
ran out of money in order to permit them to compete in the Nationals and in
world competitions.
In 1980, Svec
achieved one of his greatest achievements in parachuting when he persuaded the
National Park Service to authorize parachute jumps from the top of Yosemite's El
Capitan, and was the first to do so legally. Unfortunately, the permission was
short-lived, as the Park Service reversed its policy after only a few months.
With such a
reputation, Svec's skills became in demand in the world of entertainment – the
television series “Fall Guy” contracted his services. Building a list on
Hollywood contacts, in late 1982, he was hired by Warner Brothers studios to
perform a scene of their upcoming motion picture, “The Right Stuff”, based on
the best-selling book by Tom Wolfe, about the early days of the “Space Race”.
History meets Hollywood…
The scene was a
recreation of the December 10th,
1963, ejection and freefall of Chuck Yeager
during his NF-104A 'Zoom' flight. The production of the shots called for
Svec to don a silver helmet and simulated spacesuit, and be mounted atop a mock
ejection seat made of black fiberglass, and equipped with an automatic
activation device and small parachute. The plan called for him to hold two
handles on the seat, and release them on cue.
The difficulty came
in the form of a small smoke canister that was attached to Svec's helmet. In
Yeager's original ejection, a rocket motor in his ejection seat which forced the
separation of the pilot from the seat (nicknamed a 'butt kicker') smashed into
his helmet's faceplate, and lodged itself inside, producing heat and smoke
fueled by pure oxygen, inside Yeager's suit. Yeager disabled the oxygen flow by
lifting the faceshield upwards, deployed his parachute, and survived the
accident after several days of hospitalization.
In Svec's
recreation, however, the ability to stop the smoke was not possible, and in the
initial filmings in Texas, the smoke was still burning and he was coughing and
choking under canopy. He could hardly see to land and his film crew had trouble
getting the helmet off his head.
Due to a lack of
cloud cover for the background of the shot, the production relocated to
California City, located north of the city of Mojave to finish.
West to California…
On Thursday,
January 13, 1983, the filming was to recommence. The planned jump was to start
at 10,500 feet from a Cessna 206, registered as N29173. The camera operator, Randy Deluca, and Svec
jumped without incident, was the smoke generator failed to work. So the pair
held on to each other until they reached 3,500 feet.
They separated,
tracked away from each, and continued to free-fall, with Deluca engaging his
main parachute at 2,500 feet. Svec, who was falling in a flat and stable
position, never deployed either of his chutes. Having jumped without an
automatic activation device, he impacted the desert floor, and was killed
instantly.
An examination of
both his primary and reserve chutes showed no problems with either device, and
eyewitnesses on the ground saw no signs of struggle or difficulty on the part of
Svec. The suit he wore was not particularly difficult to move around in and,
with the exception of wearing the full-head helmet, nothing was out of the
ordinary. In the end, no explanation was found for the untimely death of the
veteran of over 2,000 jumps.
Lasting Effects…
The accident did
not affect the final outcome of the film’s production. "The movie is basically
completed already," said Alan Ladd Jr., president of the Ladd Company.
Nevertheless, the remaining freefall shots were completed by B.J. Worth, an
accomplished parachutist, and the film had its world premiere on October 16,
1983, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The film was dedicated 'In
Memory of Joseph Leonard Svec'.
Svec was buried by
family and friends in a quiet ceremony on the afternoon of Tuesday, January 18,
1983, in Houston, Texas. Larry Bagley, the United States Parachuting
Association’s president, led a delegation of USPA officials who joined with
hundreds of friends at the ceremony in the cemetery chapel. "This is one of the
biggest services we've ever had," was the comment of one of the officials
present.
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