Thousands watched in horror as the soldier from the Army freefall display team startled ‘violently kicking’ as he hurtled towards the ground when his parachute became tangled during the Whitehaven Airshow.

But his team-mate managed to catch the soldier and wrap his legs around the deflated parachute, holding his colleague’s weight until they landed in the water at Queens Dock on the Cumbrian coast last night. 

They were lined up to perform a manoeuvre called a stack where one jumper is directly under another when the chute collapse or entanglement happened.