LIFE-SAVING IN THE AIR.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18185, 23 September 1924, Page 7

LIFE-SAVING IN THE AIR.

There is a theory that if one should have the misfortune to fall, say, from a cliff-top or high buildings one would be dead before one hit the ground (writes the air correspondent of a London paper). But what aerial experiments now seem to indicate, is that a. man can fall at a great speed through the air for quite an appreciable distance and yet retain control over his faculties and know what he is doing.

In one test recently an experienced parachutist postponed deliberately the opening of his apparatus, after he had sprung from a high-flying aeroplane, until he had fallen sheer through the air for five or six seconds. Then, precisely when he had intended to do so, lie pulled the necessary cord, opened his parachute, and sailed to the ground. Some of our biggest aerial thrills, nowadays, occur in experiments for perfecting parachutes, or, as they are .called, "airmen's life-belts." Leaping from an aeroplane at a great altitude to test an experimental apparatus, a. pilot fell like a stone for such a distance before his parachute opened that. his downward rush set up such air-friction that, as he declared afterwards, "it began to feel as though it was burning my face." There was another thrill whijn a novice, learning how to parachute-jump from a fast-flyng aeroplane,. got his fear entangled with the rear controlsurfaces. The parachute was torn, and those in the aeroplane gave him up for iost. But, even with his parachute damaged, he managed to alight without injuring himself, although hi 3 rate of descent was far greater than it should have been. One civilian pilot, gliding down to land, found that his controls had become jammed when he was only 150 feet from the ground. Jumping out with his parachute, the apparatus opened in the nick of time, and enabled him to alight without injury. What an efficient parachute means to an airman was shown recently when, on a dark night and when* flying high over a big centre of population, a machine developed mechanical trouble. The pilot managed to steer it away until it was above open country, and then : springing from it with his parachute, made a safe descent upon the dark countryside below, the machine" crash-, ing some distance _ away and bursting into flames.