Every account in this series is true, drawn directly from an original application in our Caterpillar Club archive. To protect the privacy of the individual and their family, we withhold names, locations, and other identifying details unless we have express permission to share them.
The Caterpillar Club has one membership requirement: your life was saved by a parachute. Founded between the World Wars, it grew into a quiet fraternity of pilots and aircrew who owed their survival to silk and rigging lines. Switlik has built parachutes since 1920, and our archive holds original, handwritten membership applications — firsthand accounts of the moment someone had to jump.
This is one of them, transcribed exactly as it was written.
May 1944.
"While engaged on a foreign ferrying mission I was forced to bail out of my aircraft (P-39) at 9,000 feet. The cause was attributed to mechanical difficulties — a break in an oil line which resulted in fire in the cockpit as well as in the engine section. I escaped with minor burns. It required two days for me to make my way to the nearest camp, as I had bailed out over a heavily wooded area. The accident occurred out of the states, hence military regulations will not permit me to mention names or places."
This is one of thousands of stories in our archive — people whose lives were saved by a Switlik parachute, told in their own words.
If you believe a family member may be the aviator behind this account, or any story in this series, we'd like to hear from you.
Email us at marketing@switlik.com. We're working to reconnect these records with the families they belong to.