Modern (and faulty) Parachute History . . .
"Where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense, so that ten thousand men descending from the clouds might not, in many places, do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them?" -Benjamin Franklin, 1784
I came across this article today that is similar to many I'd seen before. It describes the formation of the U.S. Army Airborne. The story is about Trooper Thurman Weaks. They seem to re-run this same piece over and over, just plugging a new name into it. I don't think its outright jingoism, its more ignorance on the part of the writer that may leave the reader with the idea we (the U.S.) invented the idea of airborne assault, and worse that parachutes came about after the invention of the airplane. The story is set in 1940 at Ft. Benning, GA.
http://www.nj.com/.../110828557591840.xml
The truth is in the 1880s and 1890s, people began jumping with parachutes from balloons and this is where most modern history texts begin the history of the parachute. These texts all but disregard the many fixed object jumps that were already done.
As for the first Airborn it was the Italians who pioneered that with the first combat jump during the First World War in 1918. Also during WWI, balloons are being used for aerial recon, and many of these observers jumped with parachutes after being shot down by early combat aircraft.
The Germans formed their first parachute regiments in 1935 and the British and Americans followed suit in 1940. But, in 1930 Russian parachute troops jumped in a military exercise to demonstrate the use of parachute troops to conduct a flanking attack of the enemy from the air. And, in 1933 there were five 10,000 man parachute units in the Russian Army.
The problem is all earlier fixed object jumps are backed up with verbal, sometimes with drawings, eyewitness accounts. There are some photos of early fixed object jumps like this one, see photo one. But it's hard to pin down the dates. However, it's for sure that the Frenchman Andre-Jacques Garnerin who's October 22, 1797 jump from a balloon over Paris and cited as "the first parachute jump," is wildly wrong. Where did the idea come from that a parachute jump had to involve a flying machine?
When Fredrick Law made his three fixed object jumps in New York City in 1912, he never claimed to be the first; he knew jumping from objects had already been done.
We BASE jumpers are direct descendants of the first true parachutists, and if I do anything before I get on that big sunset load, I'm going to get that into the history books . . .
NickD
BASE 194