On this day in aviation history: In 1922 the “Caterpillar Club” gets its first member. Lieutenant Harold Ross Harris had flown during the First World War out of Foggia, Italy. During his time there, he was promoted to Chief Flight Instructor and led the first successful flight by American pilots over the Alps, crossing from Italy to France in four Caproni bombers. He also helped the United States Navy establish an aerial ferry route from Milan to Paris, so he was well versed in flying over difficult terrain or in adverse conditions. After the war, he was posted to McCook Field, near downtown Dayton, Ohio. McCook field was the Army Air Services experimental test field, and Harris was appointed Chief, Flight Test Branch, Engineering Division. At McCook Field Harris became one of the Armys most important experimental test pilots. On this day, ninety-two years ago, Harris was test flying a Loening Aeronautical Engineering Company PW-2A monoplane, a single-engine, single-seat fighter. The PW-2A had been fitted with experimental balance-type ailerons. During the flight, Lieutenant Harris engaged in simulated air combat with Lieutenant Muir Fairchild who was flying a Thomas-Morse MB-3. While banking the PW-2A into a right turn, Harris’ control stick began to vibrate violently from side to side and the airplane’s wings were torn from the fuselage. With the Loening diving uncontrollably, Harris jumped from the aircraft at approximately 2,500 feet above Dayton. After free-falling about 2,000 feet, he pulled the rip cord on his parachute which immediately deployed. Harris then floated back to Dayton, landing safely in the back yard of a home at 335 Troy Street. He suffered only minor bruises when he landed on a trellis in the home’s garden. Harris’ PW-2A did not fare as well. It crashed into a yard at 403 Valley Street, three blocks away and was completely destroyed. This was the first time a free-fall parachute had been used in an actual in-flight emergency. Lieutenant Harris became the first member of the Irvin Air Chute Company’s “Caterpillar Club.” The club was founded by Leslie Irvin of the Irving Air Chute Company of Canada in 1922. The name “Caterpillar Club” is in reference to the silk threads that made the original parachutes thus recognizing the debt owed to the silk worm. “Life depends on a silken thread” is the club’s motto. Shortly after Harris’ jump, two reporters from the Dayton Herald, realizing that there would be more jumps in the future as air travel became more commonplace, suggested that a club should be formed. Harris became the first member and from then on any person who jumped from a disabled aircraft with a parachute became a member of the club. In 1922 Irvin agreed to give a gold pin to every person whose life was saved by one of his parachutes. At the end of World War II the number of members with Irvin pins had grown to over 34,000 though the total of people saved by Irvin parachutes is estimated to be closer to 100,000!
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 17:54:47 +0000
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