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PERSONNEL PARACHUTE FAMILIARIZATION
Figure 1-2.Aircraft egress, pilot chute deployed, and main canopy free of container

Aircrew Survival Equipmentman 2 - Aviation theories and other practices
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In October 1922, Lieutenant Harold Harris, U.S. Army, was dramatically saved from death by using a manually-operated parachute when his aircraft failed. By March 1924, it became mandatory for all Army and Navy aircrew to wear the standard back-type parachute while in flight. A sign in one of the parachute lofts read, “Don’t forget your parachute. If you need it and you haven’t got it, you’ll never need it again.” With the requirement for all Navy aviators to wear parachutes, the necessity for trained per- sonnel to pack and maintain these parachutes became apparent. In June 1922, the Bureau of Aeronautics requested volunteers from among the petty officers attached to the various naval air stations to take a course of instruction in parachutes at the Army School at Chanute Field, Rantoul, Illinois. Thirteen chief petty officers were selected from throughout the Navy. They completed the course of instruction and returned to their duty stations. Three of them were selected for further training at McCook Field, Dayton, Ohio, at that time the Army Equipment Experi- mental Depot. The three chief petty officers received advanced training in parachutes. In August 1923, Chief Alva Starr and Chief Lyman Ford, two of the three, were ordered to Lakehurst, New Jersey, to set up a training course on parachutes. Although the course was established, the PR rate was not established until 1942. In September 1924, class No. 1 was convened at the Parachute Material School at Lakehurst to teach parachute rigging. Although his name is now lost to history, one of the farsighted founders of the PR school decided on a novel means to help combat the airmen’s reluctance to “hit the silk.” He reasoned that if it became known that the men who packed and repaired the parachutes had enough confi- dence in their ability and equipment to make a deliberate, premeditated jump, the aviator might be more willing to take a chance on his parachute than to crash in his airplane. In the beginning, graduate trainees jumped from the outer wing tips of a biplane flying high above the naval air station at Lakehurst. Later, the students “let go” from short rope ladders suspended from the sides of the old gondola airships (blimps), and later still, from training and patrol type lighter-than-air ships. Since the beginning of the PR school in 1924, there have been over 72,000 parachute jumps made at Lakehurst, New Jersey. With the coming of the jet age, the emergency use of parachutes has become a highly technical sequence; that is, events in time order. Today’s emergency sequence for ejecting from a disabled aircraft starts with the aircrewman making a decision to leave the aircraft. After making that decision everything is done automatically, as you will see in the ejection sequence for the A-6 aircraft, shown in figure 1-1. This is only one of Figure 1-1.—Ejection sequence. 1-3







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