Parachute Jumping

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 388, 23 June 1928, Page 10

Parachute Jumping

THREE-QUARTER MILE FALL

Plunging Down To Earth

RISKY EXPERIMENT

THREE-QUARTERS of a mile straight down, hurtling head over heels through empty space! Then a jerk of a cord, and a great silk envelope opening overhead to check the dizzying plunge. That was the experience, the other day, writes L. G. Rope in “Popular Science Monthly,” of John Tranum, crack parachute jumper, when he stepped off the wing of an airplane circling less than a mile above Los Angeles.

How far cau a man fall before unconsciousness seizes him and he is unable to open his parachute? Tranum was taking his life in his hands tc find out. Government officials want to know, and were to time his nervy stunt. Swish! Sssp! Down he plunged, deliberately keeping his hands off the rip cord that would open his life-sav-ing “umbrella.” Imagine if you can his sensations. A second passes, like a century, and he has dropped about thirty feet. Another, and another- —now he is catapulting through the air at a mile-a-minute clip. There is the earth looming up to him, lurching, whirling crazily. Not a second to spare—pull the rip cord! He does, and ends his dare-devil plunge. His stop watch has stuck. The official timers have failed to appear. He swoops to earth to find that the fall he estimates at 4,000 feet is not. a record after all—-that the world's recotd of a 4,200-foot drop before opening the parachute still stands! Though the reader may shudder at i he thought of parachute jumping as a hobby, Tranum is far from being the only man to whom life is a succession of falls. Leaping from airplanes far up in the clouds is hardly a stunt any more for James T. Clark, chief machinist's mate and parachute tester of the United States Navy. ■ Jimmy” Clark is a stocky, hardened man of the air. His face is that of a fearless adventurer—betraying in every feature courage and determination. Taking-off from a plane a couple of thousand feet up, somersaulting down a hundred to two hundred feet a second, and suddenly being jerked back when the parachute opens to the air —all this is simple after you learn, he solemnly declares. And it doesn’t take long to learn. One time is sufficient, he says. Does it give you the shivers? It didn't give him any shivers, even the first time, says Clark. His trouble was not in the air, but on the ground before he went, up—making up his mind that he would jump when the time came. “I'd rather get out of an airplane with a parachute than leap into the ocean from a ship with a life preserver,” he says. “All things con--sidered, the parachute is probably safer. “I have fallen a thousand feet or more before opening the parachute. You might fall five or ten thousand teet. with the parachute folded on your back without being hurt, provided the start was heigh enough.” The common belief that when anyone falls a great distance the rush of air takes his breath away, bites exposed parts of his body, and sometimes causes death through suffoction or shock is all imagination, according to this daring adventurer of the sky. The only thing of the kind that he notices is the frightful swish of air past him. It is like being in a tornado travelling four or five miles a minute. It is a strange picture of the world, according to Clark, that the somersaulting parachutist sees, now with his eyes toward the sky above, now catching a hazy, momentary glimpse of the ground. Colour almost vanishes. All is a blur of grey. The speed is too great for things to register on the eyes. To show the rest of the world what the jumper sees, Clark and a naval officer, Lieutenant G. T. Owen, of the Anacostia Air Station, near Washington, not long ago tried to take a motion picture. An automatically operated camera capable of sixteen pictures a second was strapped to Jimmy’s breast. Lieutenant Owen flew his plane up 2,000 ft. and Jimmy jumped. The fall was far too fast; the camera registered only a flickering blank until the parachute opened; then a fearful hodge-podge of earth, sky, space, and water. With the development of aviation the parachute has been so improved that it is now comparatively safe. Clark.

in all his exploits, has never suffered a scratch. As long ago as 1921 Lieutenant Arthur G. Hamilton safely dropped 24,400 feet from a plane at the army’s school for parachute jumpers at Chanute Field, Rantoul, 111. Sergeant Enoch Chambers plunged 20,000 feet, Miss Phoebe Fairgrove descended nearly three miles —15,000 feet, to be exact —without harm at Curtiss Field in 1921. Several pilots have been killed in similar leaps, only because their parachute equipment was fouled by some part of the plane as they wof.e taking off. The safest landing is that in which the parachutist comes down feet foremost, with body relaxed and slightly inclined backward. A posture like this is a safeguard against falling and consequent dragging along the ground. If some mishap occurs, resulting in dragging, the jumper can bring the parachute to a comparatively quick stop by pulling the lines on the side next to the ground, thereby causing the bag to flatten out and deflate. Ordinarily, despite the best of precautions, the leaper gets something of a shock when he lands, but under favourable conditions the usual landing is like jumping off a wall six to 10 feet high. A parachute might be thought to be a comparatively inexpensive stretch of cloth, but a complete outfit actually costs in the neighbourhood of £6O, and formerly cost more than twice that much. For this reason, in some measure, the Navy Air Service, with its limited appropriations, is inadequately equipped. During the fiscal year 1927 only 213 were purchased, and 1,000 more are needed, according to Rear-Admiral Moffett, Chief of the American Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. Heretofore the high cost of parachutes has been due to the use of an expensive Japanese silk. Now an American weave of imported yarns has been perfected by the Bureau of Aeronautics and the Silk Association of America. It is declared to be even superior to the Japanese in some respects. Parachutes call for exceedingly strong fabrics and intricate seaming. If one should be caught in a high wind, it might rip and deflate, hence they are interlined with stout cords, and put together with so many seams that if a rip does occur it has little chance of extending far.