When Corporal Rob Budgen made his way down the tailgate of the aircraft he was about to leap out of at 12,000 feet, he had no idea that it would be the last time he would ever walk. The parachute instructor, who had been in the RAF for nearly eight years, was on exercise in California in January 2016, and was about to complete the very last jump of the three-week program.
However, the jump was about to go very, very wrong indeed. In the space of just a matter of minutes, Rob's life would be changed forever after a horrifying experience that he was lucky to come out of alive.
"The last thing I remember is pulling my parachute cord and looking up at the canopy," he said. "The next thing I know, I'm waking up in a hospital in Phoenix."
