212man,
There’s an easy explanation, and I should have explained It better. We were not in the same airmass as the other jets. We were airdropping 130 paratroopers from C-141’s, a large 4 engine jet transport. Our formations were not your standard fingertip spacing. We needed space between the jets to avoid the paratroopers hitting each other, and to distribute them over a larger area. Standard formation spacing for a VFR drop was 500 ft in trail of lead, and slightly displaced from his wingtip laterally. With that much spacing, the vortices of the lead aircraft would, and did, flow, depending on the winds, into the track of the trailing jets. We also dropped in IFR, with 2000 ft in-Itrail and 500 ft lateral spacing, utilizing an instrument based system to maintain formation integrity in IFR conditions. Think flying an ILS for hours! Hope this helps explain my post. Also an important consideration regarding wake turbulence, was how the effect a descending wake affected the parachutes of the jumpers. Remember, we were dropping these soldiers from a jet bigger than a 707 and at only 800 feet AGL.
