An RAF instructor filmed her own death when her parachute failed to open in a 12,000 ft free-fall jump.
Highly experienced Sergeant Rachel Fisk, 32, died instantly seconds after filming other parachutists falling in tandem in an adventure training exercise.
Her final frantic moments were captured on the GoPro camera attached to her helmet as she plummeted to the ground at 120mph.
Her plunge in a jumpsuit with ‘wings’ attached to her arms was seen by a taxi passenger on the M40 in Oxfordshire, who rang 999.
A senior RAF source said: ‘It was a freak accident, an absolute tragedy. I hate to think what Rachel’s last thoughts were.’
Highly experienced Sergeant Rachel Fisk, 32, died instantly seconds after filming other parachutists falling in tandem in an adventure training exercise
Her final frantic moments were captured on the GoPro camera attached to her helmet as she plummeted to the ground at 120mph while videoing the practice in Oxfordshire
Now a military investigation has found that she did not die in vain because her film showing what went wrong in her jump may help to prevent another tragedy.
The horror unfolded in September 2021 at RAF Weston-on-the-Green airfield near Bicester when Rachel was part of a team conducting an exercise with catering staff from RAF Marham, Norfolk.
She was free-falling as a camera operator filming the tandem jumps, in which a novice is attached to an experienced parachutist. She had completed three jumps but before the final one she decided to use her second parachute system, telling colleagues she had noticed twists in the rigging lines of the first parachute, which she would sort out later.
The Defence Safety Authority Service report said the final jump began without incident and she was the last parachutist to drop from the Cessna plane. She began filming one of the tandem pairs in free-fall until they had descended to an altitude of about 5,000ft, when the tandem pair shot upwards after deploying their parachute.
The report said Sgt Fisk continued to free-fall, passing through a thin layer of cloud before coming into view from the ground, where she was ‘displaying a small amount of body movement’.
Seconds before her death, her helmet camera panned upwards, revealing that her reserve pilot ‘chute had become entangled and could not properly deploy.
The last image was taken 0.034 seconds before impact, when Sgt Fisk looked up one last time.
Initially RAF staff on the ground assumed she had landed safely in an area next to the airfield. The ground crew rang her phone but, when she failed to answer, the Cessna from which the parachutists had jumped was ordered to search for her.
She could not be located, emergency services were called and a National Police Air Service helicopter joined the hunt.
The passenger in a taxi on the M40 had called 999 at 5.30pm and reported ‘seeing someone falling from the sky’. By 6.08pm, the helicopter had found Sgt Fisk’s body.
The report found that Sgt Fisk’s parachute failed because of air turbulence produced by her body position during free-fall.
It also found that her jump suit, which was non-RAF issue and fitted with wings, may have contributed to the tragedy.
The report said the only way investigators were able to determine what happened was through imagery from her GoPro camera.
The report said: ‘Without this information the investigation would have been solely reliant on imagery captured at the scene post the accident. The panel acknowledged that it would have likely made very different conclusions based on this information alone.’
Sgt Fisk, from Nuneaton, joined the RAF in 2011 as a training instructor 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 deliver Joint Service Adventurous Training at RAF Weston-on-the-Green.
Her family said in a statement: ‘It is with great sadness that we mourn the death of our dear daughter, Rachel. She lived her life with joy and thoughtfulness for others and loved the career she had chosen. Rachel will be missed by so many.’
The RAF said: ‘Our thoughts remain with Sgt Fisk’s family. The inquiry into this tragic accident is now complete and we will carefully consider the recommendations and take necessary actions.’
