Skydiving on Sub Base: The Palatka Connection

Four months ago ...

Readers may recall Skydiving on Kings Bay Sub Base less than 4 months ago.  Skydivers lucky to have not landed in highly restricted areas on Kings Bay.

“Let me be clear,’’ wrote Kings Bay Commander Capt. Harvey Guffey Jr., “parachutist intrusions on the base must be eliminated.”

Subsequently,  the offending skydiving business relocated to Palatka, Florida.

Today...

More recently Kurt Ruppert of  Lake City, Florida was reported missing last Thursday when he failed to drop in at the expected landing zone in King's County, Washington. It is important to note that Kings County is adjacent to Kitsap County, home of a Trident submarine base. Friends say Ruppert is an experienced wing suit jumper.  Ruppert has been skydiving seven or eight years and is good at handling a wing suit, said a friend, Art Shaffer, owner of Skydive Palatka in Palatka, Florida.

Do wing suits sound new to you?  In 2006, we informed readers about Stealth Wings for Aerial Suicide Bombers.  Compare the primitive Islamist glider-wing (above link) to Ruppert's advanced model (photo below).

How close was Ruppert to the Kitsap Trident Sub Base?  What is the range of a wing suit and direction of prevailing winds at his jump altitude (about 6500 feet)?  Was he immediately apprehended by Kitsap Base authorities and to be held incommunicado for several months like Ariel J Weinmann, who, it was claimed, had been held in secret for four months after his arrest?

 
By the way, it has now been reported Skydiver missing near Seattle thought to be dead.  Will Ruppert's body eventually be found in the Puget Sound or even Hood Canal?  Or perhaps he will be found in a tree near Si Mountain?  Either way, the likely cause of death will be the same: hypothermia.

Evident coincidences of this magnitude will not be ignored by Naval intelligence, this time.

Submarines are always silent and strange.