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In 1918, when I was asked to produce a parachute for use at the front as soon, I still thought my free type would be the best, but to be on the safe side I built one Broadwich and one Stevens type as well as two of my free types. This Broadwick pack which I built has since been referred to (by so-called experts, who were not there and were not on parachute work at the time) as an original Broadwick pack from which I copied. The jackasses haven't sense enough to realize that the reason I built the Broadwich was to have a different type for test, from which I intended to select the best.
Anyway, I started my tests December 4, 1918, and from the first my free type proved the best. I continued tests under varied conditions and later, in 1919, when Major Hoffman came to McCook Field as Commanding Officer of the Equipment Section he obtained all the different chutes from all over the world for me to test.
One curious instance was that the German Henicke chute, the only chute used in combat planes in the war, and which saved several German pilots, was the poorest and weakest of the lot. A 200-pound dummy at 95 m.p.h. broke all the shroud line. Then I put silk lines on and lew the top out of it at 105 m.p.h. It required 110 m.p.h. to wreck the French Orrs and Roberts, 115 m.p.h. for the Guardian Angel, 125 m.p.h. for the A. E. F. and 155 m.p.h. for my first chute. Later I put a flexible vent in my first chute, and it held 500 pounds at 125 m.p.h.

It was with this first chute and pack I had built in 1918 that Leslie Irving and I made the first free manually operated jumps. Nearly the entire McCook Field personnel turned out to witness those jumps and the general opinion was that all parachutes were dangerous, and especially mine, which depended entirely upon the action of the jumper, while falling, to operate the release. Most of them thought a person could not retain his senses or muscular control while falling, and cited many instances where persons had fallen from high buildings, etc., and the doctors had said it did not hurt them as they were dead before they hit the ground. One so-called parachute expert cited an instance when he had jumped at 3,000 feet with an automatic attached type chute, and the attaching rope broke without releasing the chute. He said he could not make a move, not even lift a finger while falling, and fell so fast that the air friction scorched his whiskers, and finally the terrific air pressure ripped the pack apart, releasing the chute, which saved his life.
Regardless of all the stories and conjectures, I reasoned that a falling person with a manually operated pack would center his mind on the release action and forget to be scared helpless. As to the air speeds, I ignored the falling formula which everyone preached, and calculated my own table for three positions of the body while falling; head first, 235 m.p.h., feet first 165 m.p.h., and horizontal, face down, 105 m.p.h., all at sea level air pressure, and these maximum velocities to be attained in a fall of 3,900 feet. Army tests have since proved I was right, but they wouldn't believe me in the old days.

Being convinced that the air speeds of a falling person would not exceed speeds at which men stood in turrets and used machine guns, I saw no reason why a falling person could not be equally active. Also, a number of flyers had got out of diving fuselages, after their wings had left, at much greater speeds, and I knew that required greater activity than pulling a rip cord on a parachute.
Irving jumped first, pulling the rip cord immediately after jumping. Then they said that was possible as the plane was flying slow, about 80 m.p.h., but that it would have been different if he had been flying fast, or fallen a ways before releasing the chute.
So on my first jump I decided to fall about 500 feet before releasing, and also prove that I could keep my feet down. I stepped off feet first, took hold of the ring and waited what seemed to me an eternity. All the bunk they had been telling about a falling person losing control popped into my head and I began to wonder if there was anything to it. I succeeded in keeping my feet down and when I thought I had fallen more than 500 feet I pulled, but the time by stop watches on the ground showed I had fallen only 250 or 300 feet.
Irving's jump had not made much impression because he was a professional jumper and broke his ankle when landing. As I had made only one jump, and that four years previously, and as I landed easily, the free type manually operated pack was sold to McCook Field by my jump. Then three of my assistants, two of them totally inexperienced, one being Jimmie Russell who I had as a general field helper for a short time, made jumps with the same pack, and the idea was firmly proven.

The personnel of McCook Field should not be criticized too severely for their failure to see the practicability of my free type pack, because most of my testing had consisted of tearing up chutes, and causing failures by extreme test conditions, in order to prove structures and types. Of course, most of them did not know what I was doing. They naturally concluded that most of the parachutes were failures.
I had many thrilling experiences while testing chutes at McCook Field, one of which stands out even more vividly than my first jump. I had a 300-pound dummy attached to a Guardian Angel, and was 400 feet high when the chute blew out of its container and opened all around the tail of my old DH. I was afraid to release the dummy because the shroud lines all around the tail would probably hang the dummy there, and 300 pounds there besides the pull of the chute would not be so good.
I released my belt and was going to make the first jump with my free type pack which I wore on all my test work, when the chute's attaching rope broke and the chute blew away. 
When I returned home shortly after this incident Sis met me hysterically, saying she had a premonition that a chute had fouled my plane and I had crashed. The time coincided with the time it happened. Figure that one out. In 1915, while flying for General Villa in Mexico I crashed with a load of bombs, and, way back in Los Angeles Sis knew it, although she had no way of knowing that I was flying there, or that we had bombs.

Another time at McCook Field I got a surprise while testing a chute for a lift off from the wing with a 200-
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