WINGSUIT  (Wingsuit flying (or wingsuiting) is the sport of flying through the air using a wingsuit, which adds surface area to the human body to enable a significant increase in lift.) - Wikipedia

 

     BIRDMEN

 

             - By Jari Kuosma

 

 

 

 PROLOGUE

 

 

Whenever you turn on your TV, sign up at YouTube channel, go to movies or read your favorite magazine, today you’ll find wingsuits and videos of us flying everywhere. We have hundreds of millions YouTube hits, we soar in Hollywood movies, we have acted and inspired some of the coolest advertisements in TV and they write about us and our flights every day to their newspapers and magazines. 

 

I am saying “theirs”, not to divide us but to make a point that we get most of the press from outside our sport and that’s something worth to mention, especially if you know the history. In 1999, almost seventeen years ago, wingsuits were non-existent for the public and their reputation was made of a mixture of apocalypse and horror. Almost no one had ever seen a real wingsuit and there was almost nobody alive who had survived the experience. Some countries even had laws against wingsuit flying and many Drop Zones around the world had their own private bans against flying men.

 

I have written this article to bring some light towards the history of wingsuits for the people who are interested about the subject. I don’t claim by any means that this is the full story and I must apologize in advance for possible data mistakes this kind of information is prone to, and for leaving out many so many great stories and people. The world of aviation is full of so many amazing stories and people that we could fill a library! But this will do for now and I hope that you, dear reader, will get a bit broader view of what our sport is all about and where it came from.

 

 

TECHNOLOGY OF THE GODS 

 

Throughout the ages man has been dreaming of pure flight, to be able take off and fly free like a bird. Flying seems unnatural to man since we have no wings and we all know how much falling down hurts but nevertheless it didn't stop us try. A curious mind always asks a question: "Why"? Old myths talk about gods who had wings and who were able to fly and rise above earthly matters, for Daedalus it was a way to escape earthly prison and to some, it was practical means to be able to move across the land and water more easily. Perhaps longing to fly was an expression and creation of pure curiosity and joy, a forgotten memory in our DNA? Whatever the motivation the legends of brave men and women who dedicated their lives and reputation to be able to fly live on in forgotten history books and verbal stories among the initiated. In this article I have gathered some of those stories to honor the legends and the pioneers who dared to try something that many thought impossible, to construct a timeline to better understand the history of unpowered human flight and perhaps even an attempt to reconstruct some of the ideas to understand, "why"? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being able to fly is an eon old archetype of human consciousness. The Sumerians, the oldest culture known to man had Annunaki Gods with wings, 4000 year old Indian Vedas describe flying machines called vimanas, Christianity has it’s flying chariots, angels and demons with wings, Hinduism and Buddhism have a winged god called Garuda and even in Scandinavia we have found birdman figures from bronze-age.

 

 

FROM MYTHOLOGY TO REALITY

 

It’s hard to draw a line where so called mythology ends and reality starts. In Greek mythology Daedalus built wings for himself and his son Icarus in order to escape the labyrinth of Crete. Perhaps the myth is a metaphor to see the labyrinth from the above and crack the code for the escape?

 

There are also some fantastic tails of “towerjumpers”, the original B.A.S.E. -jumpers one might ad, who built wings and jumped towers. As early as around 1010 AD an English monk, Brother Eilmer, built batwings and jumped from the tower of Malmesbury Abbey. The flight went well at first but after 200 meters he caught some “bad air” and fell down crippling himself for life in process. But the legend survived!

 

Ottoman historian Evliya Celebi tells a tale of Hezarfen Ahmet Celebi who 1632 made the first intercontinental flight with self made wings, crossing the straight of Bosphorus and flying 6 km from European continent to Asia. Quite a glide ratio if you take into the account the Galata tower he jumped from is 55 meters high. Perhaps he had help from his brother Lagari Hasan, who, according the legends, a year later made a flight with a gun powered assisted rocket!

 

There is also a similar legend of a Frenchman, Marquis de Bacqueville who jumped from the roof of the Hotel de Bouillon and allegedly flied over the river Seine in 1742 and crashed on a washerwoman upon landing! 

 

Whether these legends are 100% accurate or not at least we are dealing with human beings instead of the gods, so the story continues. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BALLOONS, PARACHUTES AND PLANES

 

However, it wasn’t until the invention of balloons, planes and parachutes when man really started to take flight.

 

Leonardo Da Vinci is popularly given the honor of inventing the concept of a parachute as early as 1483 with a famous sketch of a parachute and a quote written in his notebook: "If a man is provided with a length of gummed linen cloth with a length of 12 yards on each side and 12 yards high, he can jump from any great height whatsoever without injury". Quite an insight from a man who famously said: “For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.”. How did he know?

 

Hot air balloon was developed by the brothers Joseph-Ralf and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier in Annonay, Ardeche, France. The first manned flight in record took off in October 15th 1783. Ballooning really took off from there on and perhaps the related risks of the early balloon technology made the early aviation pioneers think of a life saving device and 300 years old Da Vinci’s drawings of a parachute saw light again!

 

Louis-Sébastien Lenormand (May 25, 1757 – December 1837) was a French physicist, inventor and pioneer in parachuting. He is considered the first human to make a witnessed descent with a parachute and is also credited with coining the term parachute (from the Greek para – "against", and French chute – "fall"). After making a jump from a tree with the help of two modified umbrellas Lenormand refined his contraption and on December 26, 17831 jumped from the tower of the Montpellier observatory in front of a crowd that included Joseph Montgolfier, using a 14 foot parachute with a rigid wooden frame. His intended use for the parachute was to help entrapped occupants of a burning building to escape unharmed.

 

Lenormand was succeeded by André-Jacques Garnerin who made the first successful parachute descent from balloon just 14 years later. André-Jacques Garnerin (31 January 1769 – 18 August 1823) was a balloonist and the inventor of the frameless parachute. According the Wikipedia: “Garnerin began experiments with early parachutes based on umbrella-shaped devices and carried out the first parachute descent (in the gondola) with a silk parachute on 22 October 1797 at Parc Monceau, Paris (1st Brumaire, Year VI of the Republican calendar). Garnerin's first parachute resembled a closed umbrella before he ascended, with a pole running down its center and a rope running through a tube in the pole, which connected it to the balloon. Garnerin rode in a basket attached to the bottom of the parachute; at a height of approximately 3,000 feet (1,000 m) he severed the rope that connected his parachute to the balloon. The balloon continued skyward while Garnerin, with his basket and parachute, fell. The basket swung violently during descent, then bumped and scraped when it landed, but Garnerin emerged uninjured. The white canvas parachute was umbrella-shaped and approximately 23 feet (7 m) in diameter.”

 

The world’s first successful airplane is credited to The Wright brothers, Orville (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912). They were two American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers for making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903

 

As aviation started to take frog leaps after Wright brother’s first flights a need for parachute technology, wearable by a pilot, surfaced.

 

 

 

 

FRANZ REICHLT (1879 – 1912)

 

An Austrian-born tailor, Frantz Reichlt, was one of the very early pioneers who

1910 developed a lightweight parachute for pilots. The Aero-Club de France

rejected his design so in order to test it and show it’s airworthy he got permission

from the French authorities to jump from Eiffel tower in 1912. Franz’s

“wearable parachute”, perhaps the first wingsuit in the world, was a complex

wearable costume that had silk wings between his arms

and legs, even reaching over his back. In hindsight, it’s easy to see that the

design did not have enough surface area to break the fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ERA OF AVIATION

 

Since the story of modern wingsuits and parachutes could not be told without mentioning the airplane pilots I want to give a special mention to two extraordinary pilots, innovators and adventurers who inspired millions in the early days of aviation.

 

Charles Lindbergh (1902 – 1974)

 

This aviation legend sprung to international fame in 1927 by being the first person to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean.

Although being a reserve Army officer, Lindbergh took part in World War II as a civilian consultant,

flying combat missions. After the war the renowned aviator worked for the US Air Force. Later he also became

an explorer and inventor, as well as an author and a public activist in environmental issues.

 

Charles Lindberg was not only an extraordinary pilot but also parachutist. Here is his own words from his book,

'The Spirit of St Louis,'  1953

 

“I watched him strap on his harness and helmet, climb into the cockpit and, minutes later, a black dot falls off the

wing two thousand feet above our field. At almost the same instant, a while streak behind him flowered out into the

delicate wavering muslin of a parachute — a few gossamer yards grasping onto air and suspending below them, with

invisible threads, a human life, and man who by stitches, cloth, and cord, had made himself a god of the sky for those immortal moments.

A day or two later, when I decided that I too must pass through the experience of a parachute jump, life rose to a higher level, to a sort of exhilarated calmness. The thought of crawling out onto the struts and wires hundreds of feet above the earth, and then giving up even that tenuous hold of safety and of substance, left me a feeling of anticipation mixed with dread, of confidence restrained by caution, of courage salted through with fear. How tightly should one hold onto life? How loosely give it rein? What gain was there for such a risk? I would have to pay in money for hurling my body into space. There would be no crowd to watch and applaud my landing. Nor was there any scientific objective to be gained. No, there was deeper reason for wanting to jump, a desire I could not explain.

It was that quality that led me into aviation in the first place — it was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of man — where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane; where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same instant.”

 

 

“Why does one want to walk wings? Why force one's body from a plane to make a parachute jump? Why should man want to fly at all? People often ask these questions. But what civilization was not founded on adventure, and how long could one exist without it? Some answer the attainment of knowledge. Some say wealth, or power, is sufficient cause. I believe the risks I take are justified y the sheer love of the life I lead.”

• Charles A. Lindbergh, contemplating his first parachute jump, 'The Spirit of St Louis,'  1953

 

 

 

Amelia Earhart (1897 – 1937)

 

Earhart had an early passion for flying, and she worked 28 different jobs to afford her flight lessons.

 

Perhaps the most famous female aviator of all time, Earhart first became well-known in 1928,

when she was the first woman to fly over the Atlantic (together with male pilots).

 

In 1932 she crossed the Atlantic alone, another first for a woman. Earhart disappeared on an

around the world flight in 1937. Because of her international fame, her fate was shocking news world

wide.

 

 

 

BARNSTORMERS, BIRDMEN AND B.A.S.E. JUMPERS

 

After the First World War parachutes had been developed to the point that they were more reliable and smaller to carry. With the invention of rip-cord, a revolutionary system that allowed the jumper to deploy the parachute while in freefall, skydiving was born. There was a problem though, man had never been in terminal velocity and it was believed at the time that such speed could kill a man. There was only one way to find out jumpers started to take longer and longer falls. Freefall was not perfected and stabile since there was no understanding of it so the common technique was to jump out hand on the rip-cord and pull after some seconds while tumbling! All skydivers have experienced a non-stabile freefall and according to Leo Valentine French even gave a funny slang term for it, “Making Mayonnese”.

 

Opening the parachute in freefall while tumbling down over all axis is extremely dangerous due to the danger of getting entangled with the parachute lines as it opens. The jump altitude at the time was extremely low comparing to modern standards and thus didn’t give much time to learn, before the impact. Early days of parachuting and trying to figure out the freefall were full of accidents, impacts and amazing survival stories.

 

Perfecting free fall was one big reason for the development of “batwings” or “birdsuits”. Leo Valentin in his biography  “Birdman” 1955 writes about this problem and his attempts to mimic a bird in order to control oneself in the freefall.  In 1930’s Leo perfected stabile freefall and started to teach his technique to rookies. It was called "The Valentine position".

 

The word went around even without the internet and in Italy the Cannarozzo brothers and at the other side of the Atlantic, the American skydivers Rex Finney, Tommy Boyd, Manos Morgan and Glen Sohn were doing the same around those days.

 

Maybe because of the combination of excess airplanes and surplus parachutes, unemployed pilots and ex-paratroopers from 1stWW on that gave a birth to Aerial Circus shows around the US and Europe. “The Circus” was usually a team of a few skydiving daredevils and pilots who performed an aerial show for the public. The shows were innovative and daring, accident prone and popular. Many died and the legends were born.

 

 

Georgia “Tiny” Broadwick (1893 – 1979)

 

In June, 1913, “Tiny” Broadwick became the first woman to parachute out of an airplane. Tiny had left

her poor home in order to join an aerial show troupe, and actually made her first parachute jump

from a balloon already at the age of 15 (in 1908).

 

Tiny was also the first person to jump in a free fall – this happened during

a demonstration event for the US Army.

 

The static lines connected to the airplane tangled during one jump, so for the next

jump Tiny decided to cut the line – this way she could clear the plane, and pull the

releasing cord herself.

 

 

 

Clem Sohn (1910 – 1937)

A dare-devil from Michigan, USA, Clem Sohn had a short but illustrious turn as an air

show star. He wowed crowds all around the world by jumping out of airplanes with his

home-made wingsuit.

 

His wings were made of steel tubes that were covered with cloth, thus creating a web

between his hips and each arm. Perfecting the look that earned him the nickname

“Batman”, were large goggles he wore while jumping.

 

As was the fate of many early birdmen, Sohn too met his end early. He died in front of

100 000 spectators in France, when his parachutes failed to open.

 

 

 

 

Kathe Paulus (1968 - 1935)

 

A professional parachute artist and one of the first female jumpers, Käthe Paulus began her career in 1893. 

Paulus and her performing partner Paul Letterman were also the first people to use parachutes folded in bags, as

oppose to ones attached to the balloon.

 

Apart of being a highly successive air circus act at the turn of the 19th century, Paulus also invented and developed

parachute designs.

 

She started a parachute manufacturing company in 1912, and produced over 7000 parachutes for the

German troops in WWI.

 

 

 

 

 

Harry Ward (1903 – 2000)

 

”The Yorkshire Batman” was a Royal Air Force parachutist and pioneering parachute instructor, who made a living between the two World Wars as a birdman in an air circus.

 

Unlike most of his peers, Ward managed to stay alive until retirement. This feat was made possible largely because of his unprecedented safety measures:

 

Ward’s wings included a mechanism that allowed him to rid them in a case of malfunction – this way they wouldn’t interfere with his parachute. A safety mechanism akin to his is now a standard in modern wingsuits.

 

 

Leo Valentin (1919-1956)

 

Perhaps the most famous of all birdmen, Valentin achieved fame after WWII with his self made “wings”, which would allow the daring Frenchman to glide longer in the sky than regular parachutists.

 

The former paratrooper first built wings from canvas, but later decided that rigid wooden wings gave him more of the required stability in free fall and of course, performance. Valentin died at an air show in Liverpool, England. His parachute tangled with his wooden wings, and the brave birdman fell to his death while 150 000 spectators were watching.

 

Leo was a real hero and his innovative ideas have helped skydivers and birdmen from getgo. Arguably it’s safe to say that Leo’s rigid wings were an inspiration of Yves Rossy today.

 

 

Rudolf R. Boehlen (1953)

 

Rudolf was a native of Switzerland and ahead of his time with Leo Valentin in regards of wing technology. Rudolf knew that size matters and built huge wings, with a span of over 5 meters, supported with wooden ribs. Rudolf did many successful jumps but on June 9th 1953 he hit his head on landing, made two more jumps and died later in hospital for head injuries.

 

 

Victor Andro (Androsov) (1964)

 

Viktor was a Finnish pilot, skydiver and stunt jumper. He took part of the Aerial Circus called “Lentosirkus Pilvien Hurjapäät” that roamed around Finland in late 1940’s. Andro wanted to make “The batwing” show and built his own batsuit. Viktor tested his new batsuit for the first time October 12th 1949 in Jämijärvi, Finland. He jumped from 1600 meters and flew down without ever opening his parachute. It was later speculated he was not able to reach his ripcord but no one will ever know for sure.

 

 

 

 

 

Bill Cole

 

Canadian Bill Cole was an still is one of the living legends. Bill was a professional parachutist and stunt man, he performed around Canada and in US for shows, movies and TV. During the ‘60’s and ‘70’s Bill made batwing jumps, chute-less jumps and stunt jumps that broke the news and the nerve of the authorities more than once. Bill lives in Canada and still jumps at the age of 80.

 

 

Carl Boenish (1941 – 1984)

 

Boenish is considered the father of modern B.A.S.E. jumping. BASE is an acronym and stands for Buildings, Antennas, Spand and Earth, fixed objects to jump from. He was the first to approach jumping from fixed objects as a sport – as opposed to lone stunt jumps that had been made earlier in the century.

 

Vital to the growing popularity of B.A.S.E. jumping was also Boenish’s steady and exciting cinematography, for he was always filming his jumps and those of his friends.

 

 

Like many of the pioneers of aviation and skydiving, also Carl Boenish saw his life cut short while doing the thing he loved. Boenish died while jumping off a cliff called Trollveggen in Norway.

 

 

 

 

Patrick de Gayardon (1960 – 1998)

 

Patrick de Gayardon, is considered by many the greatest skydiver of the 20th century. He was always the one to create new and improve the old on every level of skydiving. He was world champion parachutist in RW8 (Formation Skydiving), invented skysurfing and was an avid B.A.S.E. jumper. Patrick appeared in many international commercials making skydiving popular to the public. Patrick was among the first to develop and use the type of wingsuit that is now the norm, the ram-air design. Patrick worked together with English jumper Adrian Nicholas and his Swedish wife Katarina Ollikainen. Their wingsuit was a clever design and inspiration to the BIRDMAN® s.u.i.t., the first commercial wingsuit in the world.

 

Unfortunately, due to a rigging error, Patrick died on a test jump in 1998. Nevertheless, it is his legacy that inspired so many others, including the author.

 

 

 

BIRDMAN® S.U.I.T. FOR EVERYBODY

 

In 1999 I started BIRDMAN® International ltd. in Helsinki, Finland. BIRDMAN® was the first to produce wingsuits for skydivers and provide training for using them. After overcoming the initial hurdles and difficulties like the legality, funding, team, design, materials, manufacturing, safety concerns, user manuals, training, marketing and sales the wingsuit flying started to take off as the word started to go around. In fact, there was so much fuss and media around the project that it all seemed bigger to the outsiders than it actually was. 

 

However, our team trained skydiver after skydiver to become a ”birdman” and almost every time we trained somebody a suit was sold and bit by bit our flock grew bigger and wingsuit flying became the wild and crazy sport among skydivers. There is so much to the story that I don’t even attempt to tell here, it will be a book of it’s own.

 

Currently the world aviation organisations have lifted many of the bans against wingsuits and they have accepted wingsuit flying as a sport. They have adapted the BIRDMAN First Flight manual into the widely accepted method of teaching all over the world and those Drop Zones that once kicked bird people off their DZ now host wingsuit big ways, competitions and world record events. 

 

Needless to say that also copy-cats appeared and other entrepreneurs started making wingsuits, which was bad for me but great for the sport, because competition drives us forward and elevates the sport to the new heights. 

 

 

PROXIMITYMEN

 

Wingsuit – B.A.S.E. or the proximity flying is a type of wingsuit flying where the goal is to follow an imaginary flight line close to the objects like mountainside, trees or buildings. The video from those flights is simply breathtaking. I’d like to give an honorary mention for Jean-Albert Loic from France for making proximity flying popular. Loic made a very popular video for Salomon where he flew very close to skiing hill in Veribier. Such a level of flying close to object was almost unseen at the time and the stunt received huge publicity and millions of hits..

 

An honorary mention must go to Norgies and their Superterminal video that still gives me the goosebumps! These guys took it simply to the other level as they were taking a full advantage of those monumental mountains and fjords of Norway.

 

Most recently we have seen videos of Jeb Corliss and Alexander Polli who both raised the public’s awareness gaining tens of millions of YouTube hits with their spectacular flights by and through the mountains.

 

 

 

EPILOGUE

 

Many ask me about the future and where is this all going? I think we are already in an amazing place with the sport. We have established a safe way how to share the sky for all to enjoy. We have a wide spread understanding of wingsuit first flight course and how to teach others to keep the sport safe. We have many great serious manufacturers who push the limits and make better products. We have understanding associations and drop zones who accommodate our discipline and work on the rules so we can set the records. We now have the numbers to make a difference and to be heard.

 

But we will never rest. We still want to fly further and faster and closer. We will try new things to fly better and we will make mistakes and we will learn from them. I am fairly certain that the wingsuits will only get better, the pilots will get better and one day will fly like a superman.