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English > Fighting Fires > Smokejumpers > Smokejumping History
During the early stages of the forest service, in 1918, the Chief Forester of the US Forest Service contacted the US Army Air Service (later known as the Army Air Corps), because he was interested in using airplanes as a better way to spot fires. They decided that it would be feasible, and they used a handful of aircraft to start doing aerial photography. The aerial photography aspect expanded to a full-scale operation in the years of 1925-1935. At the same time, the Forest Service started experimenting with using the cargo planes to drop cargo to firefighters on the job, and they started to implement this service on a full scale in 1929, and it turned out to be very successful.
The Original 1939 Smokejumpers
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During the early air patrols over the forest, some of the Forest Service officials had the idea of parachuting firefighters to the forest ground. That idea was quickly abandoned because they didn’t think it would be possible or practical- they left parachuting to the crazy daredevils of the time period.
It took a while for the opinions to change, and of course, for the money to be available. The Forest Service was doing a lot of experimentation with aircraft, trying to think of all the possibilities the new field presented them. In 1939, there was a surplus of funds for experimentation, and so the Forest Service decided that they would look into doing parachute jumping, to place firefighters quickly, and easily wherever they wanted to. They bought the equipment, and first started out with dropping 150-pound “dummy” weights, to figure out what the jumpers would have to go through to jump into forested areas.
They then started to let people do some test jumps, and they found that they could jump into both heavily treed and open areas, with relative ease. Of course, there were many trials and tribulations, and they were forced to make many modifications to the parachutes and equipment they used at the time, to provide optimum ease of use, and easy ways to get out of trees the jumpers might get stuck in. Finally, in 1940, the elite handful of early smokejumpers, as they now called them, were prepared to start their firefighting experiences.
The Forest Service found that this new breed of firefighters were very useful, because they could get to a fire fast, and could also be positioned exactly where they were needed. Of course, success is often marred by failure, especially when a field such as smokejumping was in its infancy, which happened at the Mann Gulch fire, in 1949.
Smokejumpers in 1940, near Missoula, Montana
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© ThinkQuest Team C0119184 :: Credits & Sources
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