Detail from cover art of the August 1961 edition of Man's Conquest, painted by Jo Kotula
The time is 1917. World War I has been raging for 3 years and shows no sign of stopping. You are a pilot in the British Royal Flying Corps. Flying 15,000 feet above the ground in an open cockpit, your only protection from the icy winds is a small glass windshield. Looking down on the clouds scattered below you like so many sheep, you fail to see the black speck approaching from the sun behind you. When you finally see it, it is too late. 7.92mm bullets from the German aircraft behind you tear through your wood and canvas wings. Bracing wires snap and the spars supporting your wings splinter. Your blood running cold, you yank the stick and bank your aircraft into a turn to evade. But the damage has already been done. Time slows as your wing tears away with a sickening ripping noise. Completely out of control, your aircraft enters a death-spiral; inside your cockpit, you can see the ground below spinning madly. 15,000 feet is a long way down, and you don’t have a parachute.
Believe it or not, during World War I, the question of issuing parachutes to pilots was highly controversial. On one hand, due to the embryonic nature of aerial combat at that time, finding a workable parachute that could successfully fit onto period aircraft was a difficult task. Beyond that, the military leaders of the day believed that issuing parachutes to their pilots would inspire cowardice and encourage pilots to abandon their planes at the first sign of danger. However, on the other hand, bitter pilots on the front lines mourned deaths that could have been prevented by parachutes.
The quest for a workable parachute
Parachutes actually had been invented long before World War I, with the first successful parachute jump being made in 1797 by inventor André-Jacques Garnerin. (History.com Editors) As the years passed, and lighter-than-air craft (such as the observation balloons) became more prevalent, parachutes became more commonplace as well. By the time of World War I, it was relatively commonplace for observation balloon crews to be issued parachutes -- enabling them to bail out from their lofty perch should the need arise. However, these parachutes were too bulky to wear and had to be "stuffed into a bag, hanging on the outside of the [observation balloon's] basket." (Mayer) When the observation balloon crews jumped out of the basket, their weight would pull the chute from the bag. This sort of system generally worked quite well and ended up saving many balloon crews' lives.
Unfortunately, aviators had no such luck at the beginning of the war. The parachutes employed by balloon crews "were not designed for jumping out of fast-moving aeroplanes, and their weight and bulk were difficult to accommodate in military machines." (Claasen) This left aircrews with two equally-unpalatable options should their aircraft be rendered no longer airworthy: ride their doomed craft down until a grisly impact with the ground or "exercise their last shred of human dignity and decide their own fate". (Ross) This, of course, meant taking their lives with a pistol on the way down or by leaping overboard in dramatic - but futile - fashion.
Smothered innovation
Naturally, this untenable situation would not go unaddressed for much longer. In the age that had seen powered flight evolve from nothing into a viable military branch in only thirteen years, tweaking the design of parachutes was certainly a reasonable expectation.
Only two years into the war, British inventor R.E. Calthrop presented the design for his "Guardian Angel" parachute to the public. While this parachute used the same drop mechanism as the balloon models (the force of the pilot's fall would pull the chute from its container), it was compact enough to be stored on the plane's fuselage.
A late war example of the "Guardian Angel" stored on a modified Sopwith Snipe.
Concerns that the model would not work as advertised were subsequently dispelled when New Zealand airman Clive Collet survived a test jump on January 13, 1917 and another one later that month. (Classen)
Regardless of this evidence, the British Air Board decided against issuing them to aircrews, stating: "It is the opinion of the board that the presence of such an apparatus might impair the fighting spirit of pilots and cause them to abandon machines which might otherwise be capable of returning to base for repair." (Kempshall) Elsewhere, they further elucidated: "The issue of parachutes will undoubtedly reduce this aggressive and fighting spirit because the knowledge that this apparatus is available will soften the pilot's resolve to engage the enemy more closely." (Mahncke)
Due to this regrettable decision, matters came to the point where British pilots were "willing to buy their own parachutes but were being denied the right to use them." (Simkin) In an ironic twist of affairs, in 1917 the Air Board provided the Russian government with twenty "Guardian Angels", with, however, the stipulation "that they should not be used for 'aeroplane purposes' as they were considered to be unsuitable." (Mahncke)
Regrets in the ranks
Whether or not the Air Board thought parachutes were worthwhile was one thing; whether or not the men who were dying without them thought they were worthwhile was another. One source posits: "Many pilots were leery about trusting their lives to this piece of 'new technology' and questioned whether a piece of silk would keep them alive. Many preferred to take their chances and ride their plane down if it was hit." (Wyatt)
In this author's mind, while this may have been the opinion of some, it was arguably not the majority opinion. While earlier in the war pilots questioned parachutes' viability, later pilots were indignant that parachutes were not given to them. British ace Arthur Gould Lee wrote of a fellow pilot falling to the ground in a doomed plane, “…imagine his last moments, seeing the ground rush up at him, knowing he was a dead man, unable to move, unable to do anything but wait for it. A parachute could have saved him, there’s no doubt about that.” (Winterton) American ace Eddie Rickenbacker called it a “criminal negligence on the part of those higher up for not having exercised sufficient forethought and seeing that we were equipped with parachutes for just such emergencies.” (Ross) Rather than improve pilots’ fighting spirits, the lack of parachutes made being a pilot in World War I one of the most terrifying occupations known to mankind.
“Oh for a parachute!… I haven’t a chance, I know it and it’s the eternal waiting that’s killing me."
- American pilot John McGavock Grider, shot down and killed June 18, 1918 (O'Connell)
Parachutes, at last
The attitude of the British Air Board had initially been shared by the German commanders as well. However, by the final year of the war, Germany found itself unable to replace casualties at the rate that the Allied forces were able to. The loss of trained pilots represented a far greater loss to the German fighting force than the loss of an aircraft. Thus, in 1918, the German government placed orders for the "Heinecke" parachute to be issued to its pilots. Designed by an Unteroffizier serving in Feldluftschiffer Abteilung 23, the "Heinecke" parachute operated in a way very similar to the "Guardian Angel." (Guttman)
Artist's representation of using the "Heinecke" parachute. Originally sourced from HistoryNet.
However, the "Heinecke" model was far from perfect. According to one source, "... a full third of the first 70 airmen to bail out died, in some instances because the static line tangled, the chute caught on the fuselage or the harness broke free." (Guttman)
A successful bail-out using the "Heinecke" required a chain of events to execute flawlessly. First, the pilot had to leap over the side of his plane without getting the parachute line tangled in the aircraft. Then, the stitching holding the chute in the pack had to successfully break without damaging the chute inside. Finally, the harness on the pilot's body had to withstand the shock of the line snapping taut twice: once when the chute was pulled from the pack and again when the chute opened, slowing the pilot's fall. Of course there were additional hazards if the aircraft was afire or if debris were falling down around the parachutist. Even when everything else went right, in some cases, the parachute simply failed to open at all.
In addition to all these dangers, there was even the chance that enemy airmen would attack pilots as they hung defenseless in their parachutes, as happened to Unteroffizier Gustav Praclik on October 25, 1918. While these incidents were largely isolated, they were a very real risk, as this quote from British pilot Ira "Taffy" Jones shows: "My habit of attacking Huns dangling from their parachutes led to many arguments in the mess. Some officers, of the Eton and Sandhurst type, thought I was ‘unsportsmanlike’ to do it. Never having been to public school, I was unhampered by such considerations of form. I just pointed out that that there was a bloody war on, and that I intended to avenge my pals." (Allen)
Nonetheless, despite the presence of these risks associated with using the "Heinecke" parachute in a combat environment, in very little time this device was embraced by the Luftstreitkräfte. "Why should a pilot be burnt to death when his machine caught fire? Why should he not imitate the balloon observer by availing himself of the salvation to be found in the parachute? Suddenly there came a day when no pilot would take off without one." (Schröder 167)
It is worth noting that after the Germans began using the "Heinecke" parachute in the first quarter of 1918, the British high command finally revised their opinions and ordered on September 16 that "'all single-seaters are to [be] fitted with parachutes forthwith." (Mahncke)
Conclusion
Undeniably, the decision to not supply pilots with parachutes was a terrible misjudgment on the part of the military leaders. Even though the argument that parachutes were too primitive for heavier-than-air flight is a valid one for 1914-1916, there is simply no excuse as to why these were not issued to aircrews in later years.
Within command circles, negative attitudes seem to have doused the flames of innovation that were otherwise advancing at a breakneck pace during the conflict. Military leaders of the day chose to value the machine more than the man, and tragically often ended up losing both.
This decision also negatively affected the quality of the pilots employed in each country’s air force. In any occupation, it is fairly normal for newcomers to make one or two mistakes. After that, having made the mistakes and learned from them, the newcomers usually become wiser and go on to become proficient in their trade. However, for a World War I pilot, it only took one fatal mistake before he was nothing more than so many aircraft parts plastered on the ground. So it was that most of the pilots in the ranks were fairly inexperienced. Those few who were fortunate enough to not die in the early flights would go on to be the veterans and aces of the war -- earning many of their kills at the expense of uninitiated opponents whom fate had denied the chance to learn from their mistakes.
Yet even the great aces were not immune to catastrophe. For instance when the Germans finally approved using parachutes, acclaimed German ace Ernst Udet’s life was saved solely by jumping out of his burning plane with a parachute. (Schröder 167) One can only speculate how many other veteran pilots’ lives could have been saved by just such means. In the end, although the compromise the Germans and British made regarding parachutes was a step in the right direction, for many pilots, it came much too late.
References:
Allen, David. “A Moment in Time.” Cardiff Rugby Museum, CF10 Rugby Trust, 28 June 2018, cardiffrugbymuseum.org/articles/moment-time. Accessed 15 November 2020.
Claasen, Adam. “Clive Collett's Pioneering Parachute Jump.” New Zealand's First World War Centenary, New Zealand Government, 30 Nov. 2017, ww100.govt.nz/clive-collett. Accessed 15 November 2020.
Guttman, Jon. “Heinecke Parachute: A Leap of Faith for WWI German Airmen.” HistoryNet, Historynet LLC, 2020, www.historynet.com/heinecke-parachute-a-leap-of-faith-for-wwi-german-airmen.htm. Accessed 15 November 2020.
History.com Editors. “First Parachute Jump Is Made over Paris.” History, A&E Television Networks, 4 Mar. 2010, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-first-parachutist. Accessed 15 November 2020.
Kempshall, Chris. “Don’t Look Down – Parachutes in the First World War.” The First World War - East Sussex, East Sussex County Council, 2014, www.eastsussexww1.org.uk/dont-look-parachutes-first-world-war/index.html. Accessed 15 November 2020.
Mahncke, J O E O. “EARLY PARACHUTES.” Military History Journal, vol. 11, no. 6, Dec. 2000, samilitaryhistory.org/vol116jm.html. Accessed 15 November 2020.
Mayer, Theo. “Observation Balloons.” The United States World War One Centennial Commission, United States Foundation for the Commemoration of the World Wars, 2020, www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/communicate/press-media/wwi-centennial-news/4977-podcast-article-observation-balloons.html. Accessed 15 November 2020.
O'Connell, Robert L. “Golden Parachute: Saving Combat Crews.” HistoryNet, Historynet LLC, 1998, www.historynet.com/golden-parachute-saving-combat-crews.htm. Accessed 15 November 2020.
Ross, John F. “Why Pilots Didn’t Wear Parachutes during World War 1.” The History Reader, Saint Martin's Publishing Group, 17 Apr. 2014, www.thehistoryreader.com/military-history/parachutes-world-war-1/. Accessed 15 November 2020.
Schröder, Hans. A German Airman Remembers. Greenhill Books and Aeolus Publishing, 1986.
Simkin, John. “Parachutes.” Spartacus Educational, Spartacus Educational Publishers Ltd., Sept. 1997, spartacus-educational.com/FWWparachutes.htm. Accessed 15 November 2020.
Winterton, Melanie. “Absent Parachute.” World War I Centenary. Learning Technologies Group, n.d., ww1centenary.oucs.ox.ac.uk/machineaesthetic/absent-parachute/. Accessed 15 November 2020.
Wyatt, Nelson. “First World War Flyers Risked Shortened Lifespan but Have Extended Legacy.” The Great War, Postmedia Network Inc., 20 Oct. 2014, ww1.canada.com/faces-of-war/first-world-war-flyers-risked-shortened-lifespan-but-have-extended-legacy. Accessed 15 November 2020.