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Sergeant Rachel Fisk was conducting a training exercise for catering staff from RAF Marsham in Norfolk when she died on Sep 2, 2021[/caption]
When an RAF instructor's parachute failed to open during a 12,000-foot free fall, she accidently recorded her own death.
Just seconds after photographing fellow parachutists jumping in tandem as part of a training exercise, Sergeant Rachel Fisk, 32, fell to her death at 120 mph.
At Oxfordshire's RAF Weston-on-the-Green airfield, she passed away on September 2, 2021.
A RAF source told the Mail on Sunday: “It was a freak accident, an absolute tragedy. I hate to think what Rachel’s last thoughts were.”
A military investigation, aided by footage filmed on a GoPro camera attached to Sgt Fisk’s helmet, has now revealed what went wrong during the jump.
On the day of the accident, Sgt Fisk was conducting an exercise with catering staff from RAF Marham in Norfolk, which involved novices being attached to an experienced free-faller.
After completing three successful jumps, she opted to use her second parachute system after noticing twists in the rigging lines of the first.
A report has revealed that the final jump started without incident and Sgt Fisk was the last parachutist to jump out of a Cessna plane.
She filmed one of the tandem pairs in free fall until they reached an altitude of around 5,000ft, when they deployed their chute.
Sgt Fisk then continued to fall further and was “displaying a small amount of body movement” when the ground came into view.
She then looked upwards seconds before her death, which revealed that her reserve chute had become tangled and could not be deployed.
The last frame was taken 0.034 seconds before impact.
It was first assumed that she had landed safely, but emergency services were subsequently called when she could not be located.
A passenger in a taxi on the M40 called 999 at 5.30pm and reported “seeing someone falling from the sky”, according to the Mail on Sunday. Sgt Fisk’s body was located at 6.08pm.
The report found that Sgt Fisk’s parachute failed because of air turbulence produced by her body. It added that her non-RAF issue jumpsuit may have contributed to the tragedy.
Sgt Fisk, from Nuneaton in Warwickshire, joined the RAF in 2011 and served at RAF Wittering and RAF College Cranwell, before being selected as a parachute instructor at RAF Brize Norton, the force’s top training school.
In 2020, she moved to RAF Weston-on-the-Green.