FALLING FOR A LIVING

Evening Star, Issue 21570, 16 November 1933, Page 17

FALLING FOR A LIVING

THE AMAZING ‘ STUNTS ’’ OF

JOHN TRANUM " CIHQUEVALLI OF THE AIR " Mr John Tranum, stunt airman and parachutist, has done incredible things. He has set fire to his own plane and escaped by parachute; crashed machines for film purposes; played tennis on the wing of a plane in flight; hoisted himself from plane to motor car and plane to speed-boat; stood on a wing in full flight and balanced a chair with his teeth; packed his ' parachute, climbed to 3,000 ft, and landed on the ground in 7min; parachuted to earth carrying a bag in each hand, freeing one hand momentarily in order to pull the rip-cord (writes Trevor Allen, in ‘ John o’ London’s Weekly ’). In a ■ two-year tour with a flying circus he can claim to have done 2TU jumps, and as many wing-walking displays. At Netheravon recently he established a world record for a delayed drop, falling 21,000 ft and opening his “ umbrella ” after 17,500 ft. And he is still alive, albeit with an injured leg, the result of a mishap which occurred only a few feet from the ground. Yet the greatest thrills of his life have been caused by others; his most exciting stunts have been of necessity and not of choice. One occurred in his early days in America. A rival film concern—he relates in his autobiography (‘ Nine Lives,’ John Hamilton) —employed a young girl who did wing walking for it. In the middle of her stunt she had fallen off the plane; the parachute was held in the machine, and she was hanging underneath, unable to climb up or drop down. The pilot could not leave his seat to save her; if he landed she would be killed When the pilot had been cruising round for' half an hour, not knowing what to do, Tranum was rushed by car to the flying ground and set off at once in a small scouting plane. His pilot, he says, flew his machine .up behind hers and a little above it, while I crawled out on to the wing and from there down to the landing carriage. As we passed low over her machine I dropped on to its top plane and climbed down. After a struggle I was able to free her. Thank goodness she dropped clear and made a perfect parachute descent. . . . From where I was hanging I found it impossible to climb back into the machine. There was nothing for it but for me to drop, too. and in the end nobody was hurt. THE GIRL WHO REFUSED. Another occurred when an adventurous girl went to him and begged to be allowed to try a jump. She pestered him until he assented. When they took off she was chirpy enough ; with every hundred feet or so she turned paler and paler, until at a thousand feet her face was “ the colour of the underside of a shark.” The sooner ,he ■ got this over, he thought, thd better; the girl was getting on his nerves. “Here we are,” he shouted to her, “you’ll be all right now. Go ahead.” She clambered out of the cockpit, held on to a strut. “Go on,” he urged, “you’ll do.” Her parachute was a static-line one, with the pack in front of her and the cord fastened to the plane. She jumped—and in jumping clawed wildly at the line which was to open it. When he looked over she was dangling at the end of 2ft of line, frantically pulling herself up on to the wing of the machine. “Let go!” he shouted, “let go! Von’re all right!” But she was seized with panic, and went on clawing at the wing. “Let go!” he shouted again. “If you don’t, it’s all up with both of us!” Her only reply was: “Lift me up—for God’s sake lift me up!” “ I can’t—l daren’t leave the controls,” said Tranum. “Let go or wo bust!” Petrol was getting’ short, and I was feeling windy. She had to drop right now or wo all dropped together. - So I took my safety belt'. “If you don’t let go I’ll hit you with this,” I cried, and showed her the leather. “For God’s sake —pull me up!” I raised the belt carefully, and with great deliberation brought it down with a mighty crack across her fingers. . A sharp cry, of pain, and she was gone. The parachute opened instantly, and she landed like a feather. “ A FINE DAY.” Once, when he was trying a new type of parachute for the first time, the rubberised silk cracked halfway down to the outer edge, and went on splitting. For the rest of the descent ho Amused himself calculating how many feet he was falling to each inch of split parachute. “It was a fine day,” e says nonchalantly, “ and 1 never saw" such a serene and lovely expanse of sky as there appeared within that evel - - widening frame of rubberised silk. When the split reached the periphery and the hem could not hold any longer /his feet touched earth—touched it hard, for he, had come down at a much faster speed than he was meant to. Ho “ walked away disgustedly. . . One of his most spectacular lilia stunts was rescuing a party ot balloonists marooned in mid-air. Tranum cauu down upon them from an aeroplane with a bunch of parachutes fastened to him, and dished out the packs like an aerial Sknta Claus. This was a ticklish job, for the balloon was small enough a target even had it been stationary. As it was as much at the mercy of the winds as I, my chances of hitting it, were greatly lessened. 1 did, however, manage to grip on to the netting an i haul myself in, with the parachute pulling like a horse at my shoulders. It was only the work of a moment to deliver the packs, and very soon the unhappy occupants of the balloon were sailing to the ground like fledglings on their first flight from the nest. 13,000 FEET PER MINUTE. At no time during his record-break-ing delayed drop, says Mr Tranum, was he confused. He carried a stop-watch strapped to the palm of his left hand, and started it as he stepped off. He somersaulted continuously for the first mile, then the somersaults became fewer, and he began to dive at an angle of about 45deg. When his stopwatch told him ho had fallen 17,250 ft bo pulled the rip-cord, and the parachute opened with a terrific shock. Experts had told him the human heart could not possibly stand the strain of falling at the rate of 144 miles per hour or nearly 13,000 ft per minute, through rapidly changing pressures. Actually he found he could safely have delayed using the parachute for another thousand feet. His ambition is now to turn himsclt into an aerial torpedo. Encased in a huge dummy bomb, he intends to dniy from an aeroplane, release himself by means of a lever, and then land by parachute. ‘ Nine Lives ’ is really the thrilling record of at least a hundred hazarded in defiance of gravity. Mr Tranum is the Cinquevalli of the air.