History of Smokejumping

In order to present a complete record of smokejumping, it is necessary to touch briefly on a few pertinent facts relating to earlier uses of aircraft by the Forest Service in its fire control activities.

Shortly after the close of the first World War, Chief Forester Henry S. Graves wrote the Chief of the Army Air Corps, suggesting cooperation with the Forest Service for fire detection in certain western States. This was followed by the organization of a fire patrol, which was initiated in California and later extended to include Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana. A prominent figure in the early days of the patrol was Colonel H. H. (Hap) Arnold, at that time in charge of the Western Department, and later to become World War II Commander of the U.S. Air Force.

Aerial fire control in Region 1 (Montana, Idaho, and eastern Washington) dates from the early summer of 1925 when Forest Inspector Howard R. Flint, together with Lieutenants Nick Mamer and R. T. Freng of the Air Corps Reserve, organized the Fire Patrol at Spokane. Lieutenant Freng remained only the one season, but during the succeeding decade, the names of Flint and Mamer became inseparably connected with the pioneering of aerial activities in the Northern Rocky Mountain Region.* During that period (1925-1935), aerial photography expanded from a small experimental project to large-scale production; and cargo dropping, first employed on actual fires in 1929, had become a practical means of supplying firefighters in the backcountry 5 or 6 years later.

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*Flint became fatally ill while accompanying a National Geographic expedition down the Salmon River in Idaho. He died October 14, 1935, at Missoula, Montana, where he had been flown by the late pilot, Dick Johnson. Nick Mamer was killed March 14, 1938, while piloting a Northwest airliner which crashed in the Bridger Mountains near Bozeman, Montana.

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The use of airplanes and parachutes for transporting firefighters was considered by a few progressive-minded foresters in the early days of the fire patrol, but for a long time the idea was discarded as being too dangerous and wholly impractical. In 1934, T. V. Pearson of the Intermountain Region of the Forest Service (Region 4) with headquarters at Ogden, Utah, proposed and initiated the first experiment in the use of parachutes for transportation of firefighters. A few demonstrations were made by a professional (J. B. Bruce), but the idea was abandoned as being too risky. Characteristic of the attitude of the times, almost everyone considered it a harebrained scheme — parachutists being regarded (and with some justification) as crackpots, publicity-loving daredevils, or just plain crazy. Hence, the parachute as a practical means of conveyance from plane to ground had very little chance of early recognition.

Yet, to anyone who might have looked closely into the matter, an array of convincing evidence of a steady growth in overcoming the hazards of parachute jumping would have been brought to light. The early observations of Leonardo da Vinci and the many practical, if sometimes fatal, experiments dating from Revolutionary to pre-World War I times had, in a general way, settled the matter of function and design. As early as 1916, Herbert L. Adams of Somerville, Massachusetts, procured patents on a parachute that he claimed could be steered by manipulation of the shroudlines, and a few years later John William Cawdery, an Englishman, invented one that could be controlled by means of guidelines attached to lateral flaps. Ivar Malmer of Stockholm, Sweden, Richard H. Hart of New Orleans, and Leslie Irvin, founder of the "Caterpillar Club," added their bit to the steadily increasing knowledge of behavior and controllability, so that even before the date of the first Forest Service sponsored demonstrations, it could be stated that parachutes were available that were reasonably safe from malfunction and steerable to a limited degree.

In December 1935, the Aerial Fire Control Experimental Project was set up in the Washington Office of the Forest Service, the immediate plan being to continue experiments in the use of water and chemical bombs which Flint had initiated in Region 1 a few years before his death. Until 1938, all Forest Service flying in the western Regions had been done by Army planes through cooperative arrangements or by private contract fliers, but during that year, a commercial-type, high-wing 5-place Stinson was purchased by the Forest Service and the bombing experiments were continued in the California Region (Region 5).

During the period 1936 to 1939, a great deal was learned about cargo dropping and several of the western Regions were engaged in making tests or employing this method of aerial supply with different types of equipment and under widely varying conditions. But it began to be more and more apparent that suppressing fires by the use of water or chemicals from the air was impracticable with the planes and equipment that were available at the time.