Originally Posted by
langleybaston
That was later, and RFC/ RAF aircrew were not thus issued.
Unanswered question in my mind: what about the German aircrew?
I believe the Germans got them late in the war. The Americans didn’t get them nor the British.
Absent Parachute | World War I Centenary“Arthur Gould Lee, a pilot during the First World War, makes his feelings very clear. The supply of parachutes would not only ensure that ‘every pilot would sacrifice a little performance to have a chance to escape from break-ups and flamers’ but would also be a ‘great boost for morale’ (1969: 57). The reality of not having a parachute was described by Gould Lee: ‘What a way to die, to be sizzled alive or to jump and fall thousands of feet. I wonder if you are conscious all the way down? I’d much prefer a bullet through the head and have done with it’ (ibid: 93).
Pilots dreaded dying in a flaming airplane and pilot, Mick Mannock, after witnessing one of his victims going down in flames, wrote in his diary: ‘It was a horrible sight and made me feel sick’ (Jones 1937: 149). Mannock was known to carry his service revolver with him whilst flying as he would prefer to shoot himself rather than die in a flaming airplane. Mick Mannock died in a flaming airplane on 20 July 1917 although it is not known whether he managed to shoot himself. (See
http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205125198 for photo of Edward ‘Mick’ Mannock.)
Gould Lee describes how a friend of his died in a plane whose wings suddenly folded back, one after the other, causing the plane to dive vertically:
3 January 1918 ‘They could see him struggling to get clear of his harness, then half standing up. They said it was horrible to watch him trying to decide whether to jump. He didn’t and the machine and he were smashed to nothingness. … God imagine his last moments, seeing the ground rush up at him, knowing he was a dead man, unable to move, unable to do anything but wait for it. A parachute could have saved him, there’s no doubt about that. What the hell is wrong with those callous dolts at home that they won’t give them to us?’ (Gould Lee 1969: 293).”