On This Day in Aviation History: The First Working Parachute

Ever jump out of an airplane while parachuting or skydiving?  Some of us jump for sport or a one-time, “bucket-list” thrill.  Military parachutists (those graduating from a military “jump school”) often claim they have voluntarily jumped out of “perfectly good airplanes”.

The US Army’s jump school at Fort Moore (formally Fort Benning), Georgia, once used 250 feet tall towers, erected during WWII in 1941-1942, to train military parachutists.  I went through jump school in 1972 and still remember being slowly, agonizingly, winched up those 250 feet and dangling from the arms of those towers until released to float back to terra firma.  We did that three times during what was called “Tower Week”, the second week of the three-week US Army Airborne School training.  Tower Week was, by far, the scariest part of being trained to jump out of perfectly good airplanes.

According to several on-line sources, the WWII-era towers are no longer being used as a part of routine, jump school training at Fort Moore.

One former US Army Airborne soldier commented on-line, “How in the hell are those dumb enuf to jump out of perfectly good aircraft gonna practice if they don’t have the scary towers?” 

A postcard of Tower Week activities in 1972.  From https://www.rallypoint.com/answers/have-the-jump-towers-been-removed-from-ft-benning

But some of us don’t “volunteer” to jump from aircraft.  Some are unfortunately forced to jump out of disabled aircraft in order to have a chance at saving their lives.  And there’s even a club for those who have successfully achieved this feat.

According to Wikipedia, “The Caterpillar Club was founded by Leslie Irvin of the Irvin Airchute Company of Canada in 1922. (Though Leslie Irvin is credited with inventing the first free-fall parachute in 1919, parachutes stored in canisters had saved the lives of observers in balloons and several German and Austro-Hungarian pilots of disabled military aircraft in the First World War.) The name ‘Caterpillar Club’ refers to the silk threads that made the original parachutes, thus recognizing the debt owed to the silkworm.

“‘Life depends on a silken thread’ is the Caterpillar Club’s motto.

“Famous members of the Caterpillar Club include General James Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, aviation pioneer Augustus Post, Larry ‘Scrappy’ Blumer and astronaut John Glenn. The first woman to become a member was Irene McFarland in 1925.”

Had the Caterpillar Club been formed back in 1797,  Frenchman André-Jacques Garnerin might have been the first member, parachuting as he did from a (purposefully) disabled hydrogen balloon.  See the last illustration in this post for an idea of what it may have looked like as he cut away his balloon to test his parachute.  

On this day in aviation history in 1797, according to History.com, “the first parachute jump of note was made by André-Jacques Garnerin from a hydrogen balloon 3,200 feet above Paris.

Image of Garnerin by Edward Hawke Locker – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ppmsca.02236.

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6500217

“Leonardo da Vinci conceived the idea of the parachute in his writings, and the Frenchman Louis-Sebastien Lenormand fashioned a kind of parachute out of two umbrellas and jumped from a tree in 1783, but André-Jacques Garnerin was the first to design and test parachutes capable of slowing a man’s fall from a high altitude.

“Garnerin first conceived of the possibility of using air resistance to slow an individual’s fall from a high altitude while a prisoner during the French Revolution. Although he never employed a parachute to escape from the high ramparts of the Hungarian prison where he spent three years, Garnerin never lost interest in the concept of the parachute. In 1797, he completed his first parachute, a canopy 23 feet in diameter and attached to a basket with suspension lines.

Schematic depiction of Garnerin’s first parachute used in the Parc Monceau descent of 22 October 1797. Illustration dates from the early nineteenth century.

By unknown artist, Tissandier collection – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ppmsca.02504.

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5991671

“On October 22, 1797, Garnerin attached the parachute to a hydrogen balloon and ascended to an altitude of 3,200 feet. He then clambered into the basket and severed the parachute from the balloon. As he failed to include an air vent at the top of the prototype, Garnerin oscillated wildly in his descent, and he landed shaken but unhurt half a mile from the balloon’s takeoff site. In 1799, Garnerin’s wife, Jeanne-Genevieve, became the first female parachutist. In 1802, Garnerin made a spectacular jump from 8,000 feet during an exhibition in England. He died in a balloon accident in 1823 while preparing to test a new parachute.”

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1866678

Onward and upward!

Sources:  History.com, Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Rallypoint.com