C-47 Fly-In and Paratrooper Jump at NMUSAF #7 in a series of videos featured by the Aviation Trail Parachute Museum Presented by the National Museum of the United States Air Force National Museum of the United States Air Force video Free parachute demonstrations & static displays were held at the National Museum of the United States Air Force on Wednesday, April 27, 2022. Two historic C-47's, Tico Belle and Placid Lassie, were on hand to drop the volunteer paratroopers and re

Floyd Smith in 2022 National Inventors Hall of Fame: A former trapeze artist turned aviator and test pilot, Floyd Smith holds US Patent Nos. 1,340,423; 1,462,456 for the first successful free-fall parachute. Near the end of WWI the US Army put together a parachute research group that came under the Engineering Division at McCook Field in Dayton. Their job was to develop a practical parachute for in-flight escape from fixed wing aircraft. They drafted requirements and tested

The Parachute Museum Recommends: For fascinating information on parachuting, the Parachute Museum recommends parachute.com, the website of the United States Parachute Association. The site offers industry news, articles on safety, and many other features. While on the website, check out the official magazine of the USPA - "Parachutist" for some interesting articles. You can click on the current March 2022 issue, and also on back issues to leaf through page by page for more ar

Jumping From Space! #6 in a series of videos featured by the Aviation Trail Parachute Museum Red Bull Stratos Project space dive 2012 presented by BBC Studios Presented by BBC Studios In 2012 Austrian Felix Baumgartner successfully broke Joe Kittinger's record for the world’s highest parachute jump that was set in 1960 (see video #3 in the Parachute Museum Theater series). Baumgartner dropped from an unofficial altitude of 128,000 feet - about 1.5 miles higher than expected.

Research physicist and parachute expert, Dr. Jean Potvin, visited the Aviation Trail Parachute Museum on July 16. As a friend and supporter of the museum, Dr. Jean Potvin, a physicist at St. Louis University, has been a regular contributor to the Aviation Trail Parachute Museum twitter feed. For his first in-person visit to the museum, he drove in from St. Louis with several crates full of parachute related materials from his personal collection to share with the committee. H

Aviation Trail Parachute Museum Report: Dayton McCook Field was the flight test center for the Army Air Service and did research and development of the parachute. Lt. Harold R. Harris was the first person to save himself by freefalling from a disabled airplane. He was also the first person inducted into the Caterpillar Club, for those aviators who save themselves from a disabled airplane by parachuting out of it. The Caterpillar Club is named for the insects that spun the sil