A tragic accident during a parachute training exercise on the New South Wales South Coast has claimed the life of an Australian Army soldier.
The deceased has been identified as 50-year-old Warrant Officer Second Class Lachlan Muddle, who served with the Special Air Service Regiment. The fatal incident occurred after he collided mid-air with another paratrooper at the Jervis Bay Airfield military aerodrome on Monday evening.
Reports indicate that their parachutes became entangled during the descent.
The other involved soldier, an Australian Defence Force sergeant, survived the fall with minor injuries and did not require hospitalization.
This incident sadly echoes a similar tragedy from two years ago when Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon, son of former minister and Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon, lost his life in a parachuting accident during a military training exercise.
Warrant Officer Muddle, renowned as a special forces sniper and expert in freefall parachuting, was participating in a six-week advanced parachuting course when the accident occurred shortly after 5:30 p.m. on Monday.
‘After successfully opening parachutes, both paratroopers collided several hundred feet above the ground while manoeuvring towards the drop zone,’ Australian Army Special Operations Commander Major General Garth Gould said.
‘After the collision, both soldiers fell from height.’
He added that both paratroopers were highly skilled and had previously performed several thousand jumps between them.
Warrant Officer Second Class Lachlan Muddle, 50, from the Special Air Service Regiment, died when he collided mid-air with another paratrooper on Monday night
The tragedy happened at Jervis Bay Airfield, a military aerodrome on the NSW South Coast
Warrant Officer Muddle enlisted the army in 1994 and joined the Special Operations Command in 2007, where he served in the Special Air Service Regiment.
‘He was highly regarded within our community,’ Major General Gould said.
‘He was skilled, professional and he will be remembered for his sense of humour and a genuine and deep commitment to serving the nation, serving the army and serving in the special air service regiment.
‘His loss has been deeply and immediately felt.’
The ADF has paused all parachuting operations until further notice, as an investigation into the latest tragedy gets underway.
‘Our priority at the moment is supporting Warrant Officer Muddle’s family and providing support to the ADF members involved in the incident last night, as well as supporting the initial investigative matters,’ Major General Gould said.
It comes just two years after Lance Corporal Fitzgibbon, 33, suffered critical head injuries during a training drill at the Richmond RAAF Base in Sydney’s north-west in March 2024.
It is understood his parachute failed to open during a training exercise and he was forced to use a knife to try and free himself in order to deploy his reserve chute.
Lance Corporal Fitzgibbon was rushed to Westmead Hospital, where he later died.
Australian Army Special Operations Commander Major General Garth Gould addressed the tragedy on Tuesday
The latest tragedy comes two years after the death of Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon
His father Joel, who served as Australia’s defence minister between 2007 and 2009, was at a restaurant when he learned about the accident, later describing it as ‘the worst call of my life’.
He then received another call from Marles on his way to the hospital.
‘(I was) trying to think the best but when Richard Marles called me about halfway out there (to the hospital), you know, having made those calls myself, I knew that for the minister, to be advised it was very, very serious,’ he recalled.
‘I used to be making these calls, never expecting to be receiving one.’
Mr Fitzgibbon added that he was ‘comforted’ by the fact his son died doing something he loved and lost his life in service for his country.
‘We’re not going to be an angry family, obviously we sort of are embedded in the defence family ourselves,’ he said.
‘We owe it to Jack and those who will still jump or are still jumping to ask the hard questions.’
In a separate incident, another Australian Army soldier Tulsa Rumney, 26, died and two others were injured in a vehicle rollover during a routine training exercise at the Townsville Field Training Area in Far North Queensland last October.
More to come.
