"Caterpillars"

"If you need one and haven't got one, you'll never need one again."--Air Corps Proverb.

The chronicle of the Caterpillar Club appears this week in a new book Jump! by Don Glassman,graduate of the University of Missouri, journalist. A "Caterpillar" is a flyer who has dropped over the side of a disabled or lost plane--like a butterfly wriggling out of its cocoon--and swung down through space to safety with parachute mushrooming over his head.

A parachute is a hollow hemisphere of strong, light silk or cotton, diameter varying from 22 ft. to 28 ft., with shroud lines running from the rim of the fabric to a harness worn around the body of the jumper. The parachute idea is credited to Leonardo da Vinci, mathematician and scientist as well as painter and sculptor, in 1495 (in his tome Codex Atlanticus).

Not until after the War, in January 1919, when Major E. L. Hoffman assumed charge of parachute research at McCook Field, Dayton, Ohio, did the modern development of the chute really begin. Within a few months he produced the first successful "free-type" chute, to be worn on the back and opened by the wearer as he falls clear of his machine. It was followed by the seat-type, now in general use, first tested by Leslie Irvin, who jumped merely to prove that man does not lose control of his faculties in falling unhindered through space.

When a man goes over the side of his disabled airplane, from deep in his consciousness comes the reflex which makes him pull the rip cord, located over his heart, and open up his life saver. Psychologically it is almost impossible to forget to pull. Three hundred feet of altitude is the safe minimum in which the chute can be used, although jumps of less height are on record. The highest jump on record is one of better than 24,000 ft. At that height, the jumper had to have oxygen for breathing. The longest delayed jump was from a height of 11,000 ft. The experimenter pulled his rip cord at 2,000 ft. The cloth chute opened with a report that was heard for miles around. His body had been falling at 20 m. p. h., the maximum speed that a man's body attains in a free fall.

When a parachute opens, the hemisphere offers such air resistance to gravity that descent is checked to about 16 ft. per second. This amounts to a force equal to that of jumping from a ten-foot fence, often sufficient to sprain an ankle. Chutes can be partially guided when the jumper wishes to avoid landing in a clump of trees or a pond, by pulling the shroud lines on the side toward which he wants to go. In a high wind, if the jumper does not unharness himself before he lands, as he must do when landing on water, he will be dragged over the ground, bashed and banged.

Many and potent are the stories of the "Caterpillars." In 1919, the blimp Wingfoot Express flew over Chicago on a good-will tour of inspection. Directly over the business section, one of her motors backfired, flames licked open the hydrogen-filled bag. In an instant, the peaceful scene changed to a holocaust. Four of the five passengers jumped with parachutes. The fifth, his harness tangled, fumbled and fumbled with it as the white-hot wreckage carried him to death. The flames ignited the parachute of one of the jumpers. He dropped straight to destruction. The other three landed. One died later of his injuries. Thus did the two survivors, Henry Wacker and John Boettner, take places one and two in the fiery inauguration of the Caterpillar Club.

Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh has the greatest number of forced jumps to his credit--four. Before his initiation into the Caterpillars, he had made eleven exhibition jumps. In 1925, during his Army Air Corps training, he collided in midair with a classmate's ship. His second forced jump came the same year, test-flying a new ship at St. Louis. He jumped at 300 ft. altitude, landed too fast, dislocated his shoulder. In 1926, pushing blindly through fogs with airmail, looking for a rift to get down to land, he made his third and fourth jumps, the last from an altitude of 13,00-0 ft, a night jumping record.

Flights & Flyers

Taft Beacon. In memory of William Howard Taft, though he never flew, Cincinnatians last week resolved to raise $20,000 by popular subscription and erect a beacon to guide airmen into Lunken Airport.

Last Loop. "He ascended on Oct. 27, 1918, only two weeks before the end of the War. He attacked and crashed one enemy plane. Another attacked him. He was wounded in the right thigh, but sent the enemy down in flames. An entire formation of German Fokkers attacked him from all sides. Shot this time in the left thigh, he sent down two more planes. He lost consciousness for a few minutes, but recovered from his dive and singled out one of the following enemy planes. He sent it, also, to earth in flames. His left elbow was shattered now, and he fainted again. He regained consciousness, still in the air, and still under fire from attacking planes. Another enemy plane went down. Exhausted, bleeding, dazed with pain and fatigue, he dived to escape but was met by another enemy formation. Another fight followed. He gave shot for shot, forced the formation to break up, and crashed--safely."

Last week the flyer thus described in his official citation for the Victoria Cross-- Lieut.-Col. William George Barker, second-ranking Canadian Air Force ace--ascended again, at Rockcliffe Airdrome, Ottawa. Instead of enemies aloft he had an empty sky. Below were Government officials come to watch him put a new Fairchild biplane (he was Fairchild's Canadian chief) through test antics. Flying fast but low, he put his ship into a loop, over-taxed its ability at the top, could not get out of the spin that followed. So ended Col. William G. Barker, V. C., after having shot down 68 enemy planes before they got him.

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