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About mid-June the parachute was explored in another thread. It seems to have lapsed from the main Forum and has not yet been added to the Forum Archives. It included a fair amount of history on German parachutes - but as I recall, it also made the point that making a parachute for a balloon observer (and effecting a successful escape) was vastly more simple than making a practical parachute for an airplane and then climbing out of same without losing control or getting entangled in struts, wires, tail, etc. The PRACTICAL aircraft parachute appeared in 1918; its delay into British service had less to do with philosophical queries about morale, crew attitudes, etc, and more to do with a fetish for over-testing and conducting comparative trials.
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