Peterborough, England, April 27, 1991
A senior skydiving instructor turned out to be a modest hero after a dramatic rescue of two colleagues plunging out of control toward earth without an open parachute.
Ronnie O'Brien, 44, jumped Tuesday from 12,000 feet over Peterborough, north of London, moments before student parachutist Richard Maynard and his instructor, Mike Smith, who were strapped together for a tandem jump.
Smith, 43, blacked out when a drag line wrapped around his neck and the two men fell almost 2 miles with an unopened parachute.
O'Brien, a veteran of 4,000 jumps, dived 200 feet to the spiralling skydivers, steadied them and opened their emergency canopy before releasing his own parachute. Smith regained consciousness 2,000 feet above the ground and they landed safely.
The rescue was captured on videotape by a camera mounted on O'Brien's helmet.
'I think people are making more of it than it really is,' O'Brien told Independent Television News. 'It wasn't difficult. It was fairly straightforward.
'I think the big thing was that Mike Smith was able to land that canopy afterwards because he must have been feeling quite poorly but he still took control of the situation and brought both him and the student down safely.'
John Meacock of the Peterborough Parachute Club described O'Brien as 'an absolutely first-rate man' and the accident as a 'million-to-one chance.'
Maynard, 32, said he was not aware of the mid-air drama and had thought it was all part of his training.
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/diz_m1rkS-o/maxresdefault.jpg)