Joseph Kittinger

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Kittinger during the world record parachute jump from the open balloon gondola
Joseph Kittinger (1999)

Joseph William "Joe" Kittinger (born July 27, 1928 in Tampa , Florida ) is a former American pilot. As a member of the US Air Force (USAF), he set several aviation world records .

Life

Kittinger joined the US Air Force in March 1949 and received pilot training. He was then transferred to Ramstein Air Base in Germany and flew as a pilot of the 86th Fighter Bomber Squadron fighter aircraft of the type F-84 Thunderjet and F-86 Saber . In 1954 he was transferred to the Air Force Missile Development Center (AFMDC) at Holloman Air Force Base .

In the late 1950s , the test pilot took part in Air Force medical experiments. Manned spaceflight did not yet exist, but planes were advancing more and more frequently at altitudes beyond 20,000 meters. They wanted to know what effects the high altitude has on the human body, for example whether the cosmic radiation can harm the pilot or even the space traveler when staying for a long time. So he participated in the Manhigh Project in 1957 .

From 1959 he took part in the Excelsior project , in which a parachute system was developed for emergency exits at great heights. During his last stratospheric jump as part of Excelsior on August 16, 1960 from a height of 31,333 meters, he set four world records with his 33rd parachute jump. These were the records for the highest balloon flight with an open gondola, the highest speed of a person without a special protective cover, the longest parachute jump and the longest free fall. The latter was surpassed on November 1, 1962 by Yevgeny Nikolayevich Andreev . The mission was kept secret until it was successfully completed, as it was carried out as a preliminary stage to the US space program, in the course of which appropriate scientific knowledge was to be obtained. It should u. a. proof must be provided that it is possible to save yourself from a height of more than 30 kilometers. Accordingly, Kittinger was received on the ground by only his team and a single reporter from National Geographic . The National Geographic editorial team provided the Air Force with a camera that Kittinger carried with him during the jump. Although there were problems with radio and weather, and a glove leaked so that Kittinger's hand swelled to double its size, the jump was successfully completed.

In the following years he undertook further balloon flights for the Air Force and was used as a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War. In Vietnam he first flew the A-26 Invader light bomber and later the F-4 Phantom II interceptor and fighter-bomber with the 555th Fighter Squadron . During his third mission in Vietnam with an F-4D Phantom II he was shot down by a MiG-21 Fishbed together with his weapons system officer 1st Lieutenant William J. Reich on May 11, 1972 near Thái Nguyên in North Vietnam and was captured in the notorious camp “ Hanoi Hilton ". He was released from captivity on March 28, 1973. In 1978 he retired with the rank Colonel ( English Colonel ) from the military service and worked with the US aerospace and defense contractor Martin Marietta in Orlando, Florida.

In September 1984, Kittinger succeeded for the first time to cross the Atlantic alone in a gas balloon . He flew 5,703 km from Caribou in the US state of Maine and landed on September 18, 1984 in Cairo Montenotte in northern Italy.

Since around 2009 he has been a mentor and advisor to the Austrian base jumper and extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner on the Red Bull Stratos project . During Baumgartner's parachute jump on October 14, 2012 from a height of around 39 km, Joe Kittinger broke records, including the highest speed achieved in free fall and the highest jump. Kittinger kept radio contact with Felix Baumgartner during the ascent of the capsule, which took several hours. After Baumgartner's jump, Kittinger and Baumgartner embarked on a worldwide tour of press conferences and talk shows.

Joseph Kittinger lives in Florida .

Awards

Quote

“There is a hostile sky above me. Man may live in space, but he will never conquer it. "

- Joe Kittinger : one day

literature

  • Joe Kittinger and Craig Ryan: Come Up and Get Me. An Autobiography of Colonel Joe Kittinger . University of New Mexico, 2011, ISBN 978-0-8263-4804-3 (English, with a foreword by Neil Armstrong ).

Web links

Commons : Joseph Kittinger  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f g Christian mother: Lonely at the top . In: Welt am Sonntag , November 11, 2012, From all over the world, p. 12
  2. ^ The press online about Baumgartner's jump on October 14, 2012
  3. Christoph Gunkel: Parachute record man Kittinger. “A fantastic dive”. (No longer available online.) In: one day . August 16, 2010, archived from the original on July 19, 2012 ; accessed on July 26, 2012 (interview).