PARACHUTE DESCENTS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 17 January 1925, Page 7

PARACHUTE DESCENTS

WAR EPISODE DESCRIBED

A woman whose parachute failed ‘o open was recently killed in the presence of 10.000 spectators at Auch, in France. An aviator . writes: “No one known what may be the sensations of an unfortunate airman hurling through the air to earth, trailing an unopened parachute behind, but 1 can imagine them, at least-in part, for 1 have known what/ it is to jump into space, putting all my faith j.n the conscientiousness and skill of the air mechanics whose job it was to pack that, spread of Japanese silk in its case. “In the experience that befell me, the approach of a German aeroplane- spitting iucendiaiv bullets at my sausage balloon allowed of no hesitation. My partner and 1 did not hurry, however; we watched cur enemy carefully, and then, when lie was just close enough to be unhealthy, we went over. “Actually we were oxicted —our cmuti-inal plane had beon lifted sevei'M degrees—but visibly we were not. bo we dropped, one after the other, quite as in the ordinary course of things. I can remember hanging full langth from the • basket anticipating my fall the- fractional part of a, second. Then—O-o-o-o-oh! O o-o-o o-u!—two sudden gasps, and l was floating down through the air. During these two gasps, however, I had fallen two hundred of the four thousand feet level at which we had been flying.

"H. G. Wells, in ‘Jean and Detox’ has crowded a small lifetime into the brain of the hero, who underwent a similar experience. Peter, I think, must have had an abnormal brain, for the whole drop is over in seconds. But think of falling past that two seconds limrt; think of the multification of gasps until the breath is mercifully driven from year body so that you lapse into unconseiocsvuess before your body meets the earth that is rushing up at you. “In that prolongation, perhaps, you may have time t-o begin to think, ‘to realise, vour fate. The death of Barit Ha Ham, ‘ one of f the first parachute victims of 'the war inclines us t-o. believe* that we are permitted little realisation of what is happening. In those days parachutists held on with' their hand*, llallam did so, but lost- 'consciousness during the fall (parachutes did not open quite so quickly in those days), and unconscious. let- "go. After his death a harness wai-i devised which supported the parachutist, conscious or unconscious.