The Saturday Texas Tech football game against Oklahoma will have a few special visitors before kickoff with a flight of Chinook helicopters dropping the Army’s Silver Wing jump team into the stadium to deliver a game ball at exactly 11:14 a.m.
“Our purpose is to demonstrate our abilities and allow people to see how we can get soldiers to the battle field,” said Silver Wings paratrooper Sgt. 1st Class Michael Eams. “It also serves as recruitment by getting people to come and talk to us about joining the army.”
The Silver Wings are experienced combat jumpers that volunteer to perform jumps and are sometimes pulled out of combat to do so, said Maj. Jeffrey Dula of the Tech Department of Military Science.
The jumpers will be performing a precision landing onto the Double T in the middle of the field and will practice the jump at 10:00 a.m. today.
“Having the paratroopers allows our fans to see the skill, bravery and training of our military in action and that’s special,” said Jodey Arrington, chief of staff for Tech Chancellor Kent Hance. “It’s one thing to have military personnel at the game or on the field, but to see them perform in the same matter that they would perform in combat is awesome and inspiring. It reminds us that we have the very best on our side.”
Eams said he will be holding the American flag as he drops to the field.
“It’s a great honor to be able to jump with the American flag,” he said. “It takes over 500 jumps and a lot of practice to get there, and once you do there is a lot of competition because everyone wants to do it.”
Part of the jump’s purpose is to honor U.S. war veterans, Dula said. During the national anthem, a collage of pictures featuring veterans will be shown on the large video monitor.
“The stadium will be filled with people from the community and surrounding towns,” he said. “A lot of these people are veterans, so it is really important to have the opportunity to honor them for their services.”
The jump also will be special to students, Dula said, because many of them are veterans, children of veterans or grandchildren of veterans.
“We are looking forward to Saturday’s game and the festivities involving the paratroopers,” Arrington said. “It’s looking to be a good day all around.”
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Air Assault is a more recent development then was Airborne (parachute) operations. However rather than create a brand new division to be the "Air Assault" Division the army converted the 101st Airborne into an Air Assault Division and kept the name paratrooper out of tradition.