In the quiet darkness of the Akron Airdock, billowy clouds formed near the ceiling and floated gently downward.
A silvery rain of nylon cascaded to the floor.
Ohio engineers gathered inside the cavernous hangar 60 years ago to conduct controlled experiments on military and civilian parachutes. With the curiosity of children attaching plastic toy soldiers to paper napkins with thread, researchers dropped one parachute after another from the 200-foot ceiling of the airdock.
Goodyear Aircraft Corp. in Akron and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton teamed up for the free-fall experiments, which studied various design factors on parachute performance.
“If the day ever comes when you have to jump out of an airplane, you may owe your safe survival to some strange-looking doings out at Goodyear Aircraft’s airship dock while most of Akron sleeps these nights,” the Beacon Journal reported in January 1953.
Built in 1929, Akron’s cocoon-shaped hangar measures 1,175 feet long, 325 feet wide and 211 feet high. It’s as tall as a 22-story building and big enough to house 100,000 people.
Scurrying around like ants, a small colony of engineers took part in the meticulous tests.
Wright Air Development Center officials decided to drop parachutes in the Akron Airdock, the largest building in the world without interior supports, because of its unobstructed views and massive floor space.
Previous free-fall experiments were conducted from airplanes and outdoor towers, but military engineers wanted a more controlled atmosphere free of wind currents. Hopefully, someone warned them about the possibility of rain.
As any Akron trivia expert will attest, the airdock is so large that it rains inside. Technically, it’s condensation. On foggy mornings, when relative humidity is high inside the dock, a rapid drop in temperature can create condensation that falls in a mist to the floor.
Researchers continuously measured relative humidity, temperature and barometric pressure during the parachute tests. Before getting started, researchers dropped paper cups to see if there were any gusts that could skew results.
Parachutes constructed
Project engineer Gerhard E. Aichinger supervised construction of 27 nylon parachutes — from flat to spherical to conical to square to triangular — at Goodyear’s Wingfoot Lake hangar in Suffield Township.
The goal was to determine the influence of a canopy’s shape by comparing “flight path, stability, weight-carrying ability and opening characteristics.”
Inside the airdock, engineers assembled a mechanical hoist system featuring aluminum beams, pulleys, stainless-steel cables, a 1-horsepower electric motor, magnetic brakes and a 24-foot arm with a movable hook.
A technician operated a central console on the floor, lifting parachutes 172 feet in the air and releasing them automatically — like an indoor amusement park in the name of science. Chutes away! Chutes away! Chutes away!
Safety was virtually ensured because the parachutes weren’t manned. A fabric bag containing lead shot was clamped below each one as a dead weight.
Small light bulbs, powered by a battery unit, were sewn into the fabric and wired to suspension lines. The airdock’s interior lights were switched off before each drop, giving the parachutes an eerie glow as they glided downward.
Two Eastman D-2 cameras, locked into position on opposite catwalks, recorded each descent in timed exposures with the shutters open for the duration of the fall.
After parachutes hit the floor, the airdock lights were turned on again so crews could untangle the lines, retrieve the parachutes and store them between tests.
With descents ranging from four seconds to 20 seconds, more than 700 drops were conducted in the airdock.
Results were carefully recorded, including the types of parachutes, shapes of canopies, lengths of suspension lines, sites of landings and other pertinent information. Researchers compiled thousands of pages of notes on drag coefficients, velocity, oscillation, angles and aerodynamic characteristics.
Results reported
Following years of tabulation and analysis, results were published in a hefty, seven-volume report in 1960.
“From these tests it appears that parachutes of a particular family or design seemed to indicate specific tendencies such as gliding or oscillating rates which did not vary substantially when the parachute shape was changed,” Goodyear Aircraft’s F.J. Stimler and R.S. Ross concluded in their 231-page first volume. “It is recommended that a careful study be made of these tendencies in an effort to determine the exact aerodynamic forces responsible for this action.
“Engineering evaluations of why a parachute behaves as it does, combined with the wealth of empirical data constantly being gathered, would aid the parachute designer considerably in attempting to provide a new parachute design with predetermined flight characteristics.”
While the city slept, Akron pulled the ripcord on air safety.
Goodyear supplied the parachutes and tall building. Engineers provided the ingenuity. Gravity did the rest.
Beacon Journal copy editor Mark J. Price is the author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.