FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1937
1937 - 1380.PDF
5i8 FLIGHT. MAY 27, 1937. DROPPING DOWN TO RIO Some Incidents and Impressions of an Unusual Mission — Demonstrating British Parachute South America By BEN H. TURNER a in SOME months ago I sat watching lifebelt drill on an ocean liner making its way across the Atlantic at a good 380 miles a day towards South America. Nearer and nearer we drew to Pernambuco. If anything were to go wrong, I thought, all these hundreds of lives would possibly be forfeit; but for lifebelts and life boats how utterly helpless we should be so many miles from land! It seemed such a pity, I mused, that we were not forced by law to have an equivalent safeguard in the air. How helpless are the passengers if serious trouble develops in an air liner! It is sometimes argued that passengers may become ner vous at the idea of being provided with a parachute. But do people get panicky on entering buildings because fire buckets are provided in case of fire? And how many sea passengers have suffered from loss of sleep because life belts are provided in their cabins? No! They study the fore-and-aft view of the fellow in the Board of Trade picture, "How to wear the life-saving apparatus," and more often than not, are mildly amused by it. It is a mistaken idea that people will shun flying if parachutes pop at them when stepping into an air liner; on the contrary, if they were edu cated up to the facts many more would fly in consequence of the additional safety factor mani fest. In any case, parachutes have been designed which in the cabin of an air liner look like nothing more than comfortably padded seats. The years I myself have spent in parachuting have been occu pied in what the majority of people would call clowning. In other words, in climbing to a sufficient altitude and then, for no apparent reason, scorning any further use for a perfectly good aeroplane and preferring to fall headlong to earth in a most undignified manner for a couple of hundred feet or so, finally pulling that piece of cord which is termed R.I.P.—a i61b. pull which makes all the difference between '' Rest in Peace '' and '' Rest in One Piece." Has such "clowning" served no other purpose than to give a certain thrill to many who come to see air circuses from the wrong side of the screening? They look at the fellow as he goes up with sympathy in their eyes and a sort of morbid expectation in their minds that it may not open—" I hope it doesn't; but I do hope the poor chap won't get hurt." Personally, I must admit I have never parachuted to amuse the public ; I have looked upon it as a demonstra - tion of the safety of the modern parachute correctly handled. Rio de Janeiro : The aerial view of the city, seen as the author descended during one of his drops, was " the most magnificent I have ever seen ; I could have sung with delight." He is seen in action in the heading picture, taken during his South American tour.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
