Aeronautics: Death of a Jumper

Anyone who ever saw Herbert Emerson (“Spud”) Manning, 25, make a parachute jump would have predicted violent death for him. His specialty at fairs and air meets was the delayed opening. From a plane three miles high he would plummet down, trailing flour like a comet’s tail, until within 1,000 ft. of the ground, then jerk his ‘chute open. His most famed jump occurred a year ago in California when he fell 16,000 ft., jerked his ripcord at 500 ft., landed in an orange tree. An English jumper beat that record for altitude (he dropped 17,250 ft.) but pulled his ripcord at 3,750 ft. No one had dropped so far and so close to earth as Spud Manning.

A quiet, earnest person, Manning made barely enough at his jumping to support a pretty wife and five-year-old son at Pico, Calif. Last month he got $1,000 for eight jumps at the California State Fair at Sacramento. On he went to Chicago for the International Air Races, spent the whole sum on four new ‘chutes. Following the races he attended a party at the South Bend, Ind. home of Vincent Bendix (automobile and airplane parts). Another guest, Charles T. Otto, offered to fly him and a girl friend back across Lake Michigan’s tip to Chicago in an autogiro. The ‘giro never reached shore.

Last week, day after Manning’s wife gave birth to a daughter, his body was washed up at Indiana Harbor with those of his companions. They were partly dressed, unbruised, obviously had tried to swim ashore after the ‘giro settled onto the surface with a faulty engine or empty fuel tanks.*

*Like all landplanes, autogiros sink in water. Excepting the case of an experimental craft in France last year, ‘giro-builders can still claim that no occupant has been killed by a ‘giro crash.