A free fall parachute saved a pilot from his stricken aircraft for the first time exactly one hundred years ago on Oct. 20, 1922.
Lt. Harold Harris was participating in a mock air-to-air combat mission with fellow pilots including Jimmy Doolittle, when his Loening PW-2A monoplane’s collapsed and the plane entered a shallow dive.
Thankfully, Harris was wearing a Type A parachute and he jump out of the aircraft just before the wings rip free from the plane’s fuselage. Mistaking a metal ring on his leg strap for the parachutes’ ripcord, Harris took 3 attempts before deploying this parachute just 500ft above ground and into history book.
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