5 LAST ISSUE 83 pe S’’ became d U.S. Army Developped its earlier it consis- 24 foot diameter th 24 shroud lines ng enough t sup- pounds. ober 20, 1922, Lt. . Harris, Chief of Army Air Service ing Division’s t section, became ilot to save his life free fall manually chute. 00 feet his test an to disintegrate. dn’t wait although particularly like of jumping. As he }in the cockpit to he slipstream snat- rom the plane and laws of nature took imbling and spin- didn’t find his rip he was 500 feet off d ; war most Situations in bred at speeds and altitudes that didn’t make it difficult to exit the plane, but in 1943 a survey re- vealed that 12.5 per cent of emergency parachute jumps were fatal and 45.5 per cent involved injuries. One important fact stood out: most casualties resulted from collision with the air- craft body and not from the parachute itself. This prob- lem was soon alleviated with the ejection seat that was standard equipment on vir- tually all aircraft by 1948. With the advent of rocket propelled -and hypersonic jets, new problems arose and new tests had to be performed. It would be im- possible to name all the parachute testers and their achievements but a_ few merit special mention for some of the most incredible jumps in history. Capt. Joseph W. Kittin- ger, USAF proved that man could survive an emergency escape from the edge of space. This leap from pro- 2 AWS © \ FRE OTHER PRESS ject Excelsior in 1960 was without a question the world’s longest free fall from 102,800 feet to 18,000 feet, a record that may stand for a long time to come. George F. Smith, a North American Aviation test pi- lot was the first man to survive a supersonic emer- gency bailout. On February 26, 1955 while flying a supersonic jet, his plane began a plunge straight down after its controls lock- ed. He triggered the ejection seat and blew himself out at 6,500 feet while screaming through the air at 777 miles an hour! A supersonic brick wall instantly knocked Smith un- concious. Fishermen pulled him from the water off Palos Verdes, California, more dead than alive. He was hospitalized for weeks with severe injuries to all parts of his body but he recovered to fly again. Lt. Col. William H. Ran- kin, USMC on July 26 1959 was forced to eject at 47,000 _ feet without a pressure suit. “When the seat fired it felt as though a huge bull elephant kicked me in the rear and made an explosive snort at the same time,’’ he recalled. At 10,000 feet his chute opened automatically whereupon he was im- mediately sucked into a it felt as though a huge bull elephant kicked me in the rear boiling thunderstorm, bat- tered by ferocious winds and pounded by mammoth hail- storms. His descent should have taken less than 10 minutes, but it took over 40. ing for Ultimate Heigh How I ever got the thought in my head about skydiving I can’t honestly say. However, the key to my actually going out and jump- ing was finding someone else to do it with. One. evening I was having a coffee with Lori, one of my co-workers at the B.C. Place stadium. We were talking about life and somehow the subject of skydiving crept into the conversation. Upon learning that we each want- ed to do it we set a date (after making sure that med- ical premiums had been paid up). Looking in the Yellow Pages® we found one school, Horizon Aerosports out in Abbotsford, about a hundred and thirty kilo- metres east of Vancouver. When we went to their office, in Vancouver, to re- gister and pay for the jump, ($85 may seem like a lot of money but for a thrill that most people do only once during their lifetime it’s a small price to pay) we im- mediately started having ~ second thoughts. The office was someone’s basement with some wood panelling hastilly thrown up against the cement walls and a secretary who would not go near a parachute. For the next few days before the jump I envisioned my training class to consist of hairy 673’ ex Sumo wrestlers tossing one out of the plane’s door at 2,500 feet without the benefit of a parachute because they couldn’t afford one. Actually my fears were unfounded as the training was top rate and first class. We were taught how to exit the plane, the correct pos- ture when falling, the count (which you always forget to do), how to land (hit the ground harder than it hits you). Then it was time for lunch. Nobody was overly hungry. After lunch we got a final and sobering lecture on what to do if something goes wrong. We concluded our itwelve yards broad and as many yards 1a dreat hei®ht without danger to himself.” Leonardo Da Vinci 153 PAGE 7 training session on this hap- py note and got suited up with parachutes (after we all had gone to the bathroom for one last time). It should be pointed out that when jumping we were hooked up to a static line so the parachute would open - automatically. As for land- ing there were no obstacles to worry about except for one field covered with pig manure. There was a person on the ground who would guide us with a giant arrow (the tattered remnants of a hang glider) to the landing area. Steering the parachute is quite easy, you could pull a handle on your left to turn left and vice versa. Actually, except for one field you could land anywhere you wanted. ; When my parachute open- ed everything became total- ly quiet and then the ex- hileration set in. I HAD DONE IT! I had jumped out of an airplane with nothing -but a piece of canvas on my back. I had conquered one of man’s most terrifying fears. The scenery was fantastic and for those brief seconds while floating down to earth there was nothing that could compare to the feeling you had running through your body. It was indeed truly magnificient to be alive for that brief interval of time. On the way back from Abbotsford Lori and I com- mented on what we had just done with each of us fully realizing what the other had gone through. Unfortunately when we told everyone else what we had done they couldn’t understand what we went through. The rep- lies we mainly got were, “Gee, that sounds exciting, were you scared. ‘‘ If you do go skydiving be prepared for this when you explain it to someone be- cause unless the person has jumped before or wants to jump they just can’t com- prehend the most incredible feeling in life.