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BOB STURTIVANT

Bob and two others joining up during freefall whilst flying from Dunkeswell airfield, near Honiton, Devon in 1980.
Bob Sturtivant is one of the Royal Marines team which gained the bronze medal in 1984 Third World Cup Competition of Canopy Relative Work, which took place at Toogoolawah, Australia in October 1984, with teams from 11 countries competing.
The following information is from Bob:





It shows one of the stacks we did in 1984 at the Army Parachute Association base at Netheravon in Wiltshire, this was done after having successfully built an all Royal Marine(RM) 15 stack or plane as it is more correctly known in 1983. We (The Royal Marines) were attempting to beat a world record that was held by the Americans which was a 23 plane.

Despite a lot of hard work and training we only managed a 17 in that period, however later that year we went to Australia and competed in the 3rd World Cup of CRW (Canopy Relative Work) and achieved a Bronze Medal in the speed 8 plane event, being beaten by the Americans in second place and the French in first.

The following year the RM’s organised a weeks training camp at the Royal Navy & Royal Marines Sport Parachute Association (RN & RM SPA) at Dunkeswell in Devon which is where I was working at that time as an instructor, with a great deal of support from the military and from sponsors we achieved a 23 plane on the very last jump which equalled the world record at the a time, however the following year the same base was chosen and with similar support we did another training camp and achieved the 24 plane which is still a world record today as no one has built a bigger plane formation, this was recorded as such by the FAI and by the Guinness Book of world records.

The 1986 record was also the subject of a one hour documentary by skydiving photographer and adventurer-Leo Dickenson entitled ‘Stacking in the Sky’ which was aired on TV on channel 4 in the October of that year. Since then however the world record for a formation, I believe is a 100 canopy Diamond formation with jumpers coming from all over the world to take part and this is the only canopy formation record shown by the Guinness book of world records. Although there were several Brits involved none of them were Royal Marines.

I also took part in a 50 way Military freefall formation record in August 1988 at Middle Wallop it was done on an open day in front of the public but took about a week of training dives to achieve and was co-ordinated by Major Tim Mace AAC who was second in running as the first British astronaut (Helen Sharman being the first), this was a British and European record for about a week when I believe the French did a bigger formation.

Bob at Toogoolawah, Australia in October 1984. Bob is second from the right on the back row.
Royal Marines Freefall Parachute Display Team

Bob is one of the Royal Marines Freefall Parachute Display Team in a 17-man stack in October 1985 for 'The Big Jump' in the BBC1 series 'Record Breakers'. Bob is sixth from the top.

Bob in 1980
Bob in Royal Marines uniform.
A young Bob in Marines uniform.





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Last Update 3rd January 2012
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