We did have a thread on parachutes some months ago. I had always questioned that old excuse about not giving the pilots 'chutes to encourage them to save the planes, but felt that the logic behind that was untenable after
Bloody April and the horrendous RAF losses. Fortunately for forumites, we had a parachute expert, Dan-San Abbot, who could give us some well-informed words. You might want to look up that thread again, believe it was in the OTHER WW1 heading in summer or fall 2003. Afterwards, I did a little more looking around the literature and found references to how horribly bulky the early chutes were, and that they needed a static line to work, and were definitely unuseable in aircraft.
Watching the "making of" for the NASA Spirit Rover Mission brought a lot of this to my mind again... they had problems with their parachute design before launch, finally resolving it by making the air escape hole at the center of the chute somewhat smaller in diameter. I just read that the data indicates it opened about a mile lower than it was expected to - so parachutes aren't perfected even today!
Best Regards,
Zeppelin