HEADLONG DIVE FROM AEROPLANE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 7 January 1926, Page 9

HEADLONG DIVE FROM AEROPLANE.

* UPSIDE DOWN LEAP TO TEST PARACHUTE.

LONDON, Nov. 20. Experts standing on the wind-swept aerodrome at Stag Lane, Edge ware, had one of the biggest thrills ever seen in flying. Captain H. Spencer, an expert parachutist, who lias made more than 100 leaps from aeroplanes in flight, was seen, a tiny figure, standing in the passenger’s seat of a DH9 biplane flying high overhead. The next moment he dived head first towards the earth

Almost instantly there was a flicker of white from a pack which he carried on his back. It was, a tiny “pilot” parachute. This drew out another and larger parachute, and the next moment, bellowing out in the wind — which was blowing almost at gale force at that height—there came a third, man-carrying parachute, which bore the airman safely to a field adjoining the aerodrome.

The test was the first public ‘‘live” drop with a type of parachute which has been developed as a result of fifteen years’ work by Colonel H. S. Holt. “ . By its threefold action it is said to arrest the fall of a parachutist more smoothly than any other type, and it is now claimed that this all-British device is the safest of its kind in the world.

Captain Spencer, after he had alighted, expressed complete satisfaction with the apparatus. “It- is my usual method,” he said,

“when making such tests -is this, to jump head-first out of the aeroplane. While I am falling head downwards I can see what happens as the parachutes come out of their,container." “This time T saw the first one come flashing out just past my legs, to he followed instantly by the others. “I can watch what is going on while I am falling. With such a perfected parachute one is onlv just beginning to experience the bodily sensations set up by falling at the moment when the quick-acting apparatus checks one’s drop.” Captain Spencer himself was too modest to refer to certain thrilling exploits in his career ns a parachutist, but those on the aerodrome acquainted with his work declare that one of his most wonderful feats was to try the effect of a drop from an aeroplane which the pilot had deliberately put into a spinning nose-dive. With the machine tumbling towards the earth Captain Spencer leapt out without hesitation, and made a perfectly good descent, demonstrating that an airman in such an emergency could use a parachute as a life-saver.