“Next I turned my attention to locating a landing place. I was over mesquite and drifting in the general direction of a plowed field which I reached by slipping the chute. Shortly before striking the ground, I was drifting backwards, but was able to swing around in the harness just as I landed on the side of a ditch less than 100 feet from the edge of the mesquite. Although the impact of landing was too great for me to remain standing, I was not injured in any way. The parachute was still held open by the wind and did not collapse until I pulled in one group of shroud fines.
“During my descent I lost my goggles, a vest pocket camera which fitted tightly in my hip pocket, and the rip cord of the parachute.”
During the descent all the other planes broke formation and arched around us. Every ship within sight proceeded at full speed to the spot and before long the air was full of machines. Several of the De Havilands landed in the plowing and within half an hour two planes with extra parachutes were sent to take us back to Kelly. About an hour after the crash we had two new S.E.-5’s and were back in the air again.
The parachute is a marvelous invention, experimented with as early as the 16th century by Leonardo da Vinci.
The first parachute was built by a Frenchman in 1784. This parachute was a rigid structure covered with very strong paper and fabric. It was used in a jump from a building in Paris.
About a year later the same type of parachute was dropped from a hot-air balloon in England. Soon jumps began to be made from balloons with other types of rigid parachutes.
About 1880, Captain Thomas Baldwin made a name for himself by jumping from hot-air balloons with a chute which was a forerunner of the present type. He was the first really successful jumper, but success in those days was judged by how long a man lived in this profession.
In 1912, the first parachute jump from an airplane was made. The container was attached to the plane and the man who did the jumping pulled the parachute out as he fell.
The war really proved that the parachute is a life saving apparatus for use with airplanes. Early in 1918 the allied pilots reported that German pilots were using parachutes to escape from their planes whenever they were out of control or set on fire. This was the beginning of insistent demands on the part of our allied pilots for parachute equipment. The A.E.F. tried to produce a satisfactory parachute by combining the good feature of several chutes already in existence. All of these, however, were very bulky and heavy and hard to get on the plane.
During the summer of 1918, the U. S. Air Service officials appealed to Washington for good airplane parachutes. A large number of tests were made. Finally, after combining all the good points of foreign and American chutes, a satisfactory free type of parachute was developed. By free type I mean the kind of parachute which is entirely independent of the plane.