Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, June 24, 1943. Heroic jump.

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, June 24, 1943. Heroic jump.: 

Wednesday, June 24, 1943. Heroic jump.

Col. W. Randolph Lovelace, M.D. bailed out of a B-17 at 40,200 feet in a medical experiment which would lead to flight crews being instructed to delay opening parachutes until they reached a lower altitude, so as to not pass out from the shock of the parachute's opening at high altitude.

Dr. Lovelace at age 52, showing how, really, this generation took on the appearance of aging much more rapidly than current ones do.

Dr. Lovelace and his wife died in a December 1965 private plan crash near Aspen, Colorado.  The pilot, 27 year old Milton Brown, also died of injuries at the site, but not before he placed their bodies next to each other and covered them with a coat.

First Jump. October 20, 1922

Lt. Harold R. Harris bailed out of a Leoning PW-2A over Dayton, Ohio, being the first U.S. military pilot to make an emergency parachute exist from an aircraft.  The aircraft crashed at 403 Valley Street without injuring anyone.

Harris.  He wasn't the first man saved by parachute, contrary to what this caption states.  Balloon crews had used them during World War One and passengers in disabled aircraft had used them before this day in 1922 as well.  He was the first aircraft pilot to use one.

Harris was a test pilot, and unlike many in that field, he lived a long life, serving in the military twice as well as having a role in commercial aviation.  He died at age 92 in 1988.

The crash site.

Indeed Crimean pilot Pavel Argeyev, who had served in the French and Imperial Russian militaries, died this day in an aircraft accident in Czechoslovakia, which he was flying as a test pilot.

Lex Anteinternet: February 10, 1941. Threats from the sky.

Lex Anteinternet: February 10, 1941. Threats from the sky.: 

February 10, 1941. Threats from the sky.

Short Stirlings, bombed Rotterdam, their first combat use. The four engine bomber first flew in 1939.

The British, on this day, engaged in their first airborne commando type raid, dropping paratroopers in Calabria, Italy, to destroy on aqueduct.  I learned that here:

Today in World War II History—February 10, 1941

All 35 paratroopers were captured.

The operation was called Operation Colossus.

The men of the unit had all been drawn from No. 2 Commando of the Special Air Service and were in fact commandos, so they were not a conventional paratrooper unit.

More on the raid:

First British Airborne Raid

The RAF raided Rotterdam.  The Luftwaffe raided Iceland.

A milestone in aviation history: Aviators parachute from from moving aircraft in France. . . .and Texas.

It was reported that on this day, in 1918, a French aviator, and an American one, both experimented with parachuting from moving aircraft.

Like all things aviation,  parachutes were advancing fairly rapidly under the pressure of World War One. They'd already been introduced for balloon crewmen, who could parachute out of balloons in combat scenarios.  Indeed, they typically did so when it became apparent a balloon was about to be attacked, as they had to put the parachute harness on in order to get out. They did not simply routinely wear it.  But up until this point in the war, it had not been the case that aviators wore parachutes or even could.

Indeed, it would not become standard until after the war.  While these experiments proved it could be done, it remained the case that wearing an early parachute in an early airplane was not easy to do, and indeed, was largely impractical for the most part.

A larger view of the same newspaper can be seen on our Today In Wyoming's History site for this date.

Holscher's Hub: Natrona County High School Parchuting Club, 1980

Holscher's Hub: Natrona County High School Parchuting Club, 1980: ...

These are photographs I took in 1980 while a photographer for the high school newspaper, the Gusher.

In looking back at these, I can only really recognize two people I knew or know, one of whom is the other high school paper photographer.  I recall photographing this for the paper, but I didn't realize, until I went back to scan them in, just how many photographs I'd taken that day.  Quite a number.