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
