Double Amputee Vet Dares To Freefall

Monday, July 11, 2022 at 03:41 PM ET

Verified

Sgt. Jonathon Blank of U.S. Marine Corps 1st Force Reconnaissance Company lost both his legs in an improvised explosive device blast while deployed in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. [Photo: AXIS Flight instructor Niklas Daniel]

Key Takeaways:

Sgt. Jonathon Blank, a double amputee Marine veteran, earned his Skydiving A License through a program offered by Operation Enduring Warrior, reconnecting with his military freefall training and achieving a significant personal accomplishment.
His training involved extensive preparation, including custom gear modifications and hours of wind tunnel practice, to adapt his body position and develop a unique "airplane-like" sliding landing technique for safe skydiving without legs.
Blank emphasizes that this achievement is crucial for mental health, providing a sense of accomplishment, boosting confidence, and demonstrating the importance of setting challenging goals and pushing oneself after severe injury.

See a mistake? Contact us.

Editor’s Note: In October 2010, Sgt. Jonathon Blank of U.S. Marine Corps 1^st Force Reconnaissance Company lost both his legs in an improvised explosive device blast while deployed in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Blank recently obtained his Skydiving A License, the certification required for jumping without supervision, through a program offered by non-profit Operation Enduring Warrior in partnership with AXIS Flight School in Eloy, Arizona. FLYING recently spoke with him about his skydive training and how he’s adapted to jumping out of airplanes as a double amputee. Here are excerpts from that conversation, edited for space and clarity.

I was in the U.S. Marine Corps. I was a Force Reconnaissance Marine, which is Special Operations, and so a lot of our training is specialty schools in certain platforms, like freefall. So I’d been trained to jump before. It was something I really wanted to get back into, kind of as a tie to what I used to do.