Ohio inventions and firsts · First · 1919
First planned free-fall parachute jump with manual opening
On April 28, 1919 Leslie Irvin jumped from a DH-9 flown by James Floyd Smith at 1,500 ft, opening a backpack parachute by ripcord; Irvin founded his company in Buffalo, N.Y. weeks later.
At a glance
- Year
- 1919
- Company
- Irvin Air Chute / McCook Field
- Place
- Dayton, Montgomery County ZIP 45402 · Dayton · Montgomery County
The story
Early parachutes were often tied to a balloon basket or automatically pulled open by a line. A pilot who had to bail out needed a chute that he could open himself, after he cleared the plane.
McCook Field in Dayton, the U.S. Army Air Service's engineering center from 1917 to 1927, was where the problem was tackled. Its list of firsts includes free-fall parachutes. On April 28, 1919, Leslie Irvin jumped from a de Havilland DH9 piloted by James Floyd Smith at 1,500 feet, flying 100 mph, and pulled a ripcord to open a 28-foot backpack parachute. He broke his ankle landing, but he lived.
His Type A parachute combined a soft pack worn on the back (building on Charles Broadwick's 1906 design), a manual ripcord and a pilot chute to pull out the main canopy.
Less than two months later Irvin founded an air chute company in Buffalo, New York, which became the world's largest parachute maker. In 1924 it started the Caterpillar Club, for pilots whose lives were saved by its parachutes.
Timeline
- 1917: McCook Field opens in Dayton as the Army's aviation engineering center. (Dayton, OH) source
- 1919-04-28: Leslie Irvin makes the first American free-fall jump with a manually opened parachute. (Dayton, OH) source
- 1919: Irvin founds his air chute company in Buffalo, New York. (Buffalo, NY) source
- 1924: The Caterpillar Club is launched for pilots saved by the parachutes. (Buffalo, NY) source
- 1927: McCook Field closes as operations move to a new field that becomes Wright-Patterson. (Dayton, OH) source
What it changed
- Jump from 1,500 feet with a 28-foot parachute.
- The company became the world's largest parachute maker.
Why it matters
Type A backpack parachute set the aircraft-parachute standard.
Further reading
Sources
Confidence. Medium: the main facts were confirmed, but some details (often an address or ZIP code) were not.