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History

Smokejumping has a rich and colorful history, often passed along through oral tradition.

One of our goals in maintaining this site is to preserve and share that history in a more permanent and widely accessible form. This section is divided into the chronological entry points listed below.

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Features:

The Birth Of Smokejumping

1. Aerial Patrols - The period from the end of WWI through the inception of the Aerial Fire Control Experimental Project in 1935.
2. The Winthrop Experiments - The initial experimental testing conducted during 1939 just after the conclusion of the discontinuation of bombing tests.
3. Training - The premiere training period during the summer of 1940.
4. The First Jumps - The first actual fire jumps later that same summer.

Of Historical Note

• Higgins Ridge - The rescue at Higgins Ridge.
• Koyukuk - The near disasterious crash of a Fairchild C-119 over the South Fork of the Koyukuk river.
• The Triple Nickle - An introduction to the the first and only all "colored" parachute organization in world history, The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion.

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At Smokejumpers.com:

• Video: Smokejumpers: Firefighters from the Sky. This is the definitive record of Smokejumping. A full 120 minutes of Smokejumper history.
• Images: the history section of Smokejumpers.com's image gallery.

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On The Web:

Fighting fires, and indignities

at HighCountryNews.org

Crouching at the side hatch of the roaring Ford Trimotor plane, a young man peers into a thick column of smoke 1,000 feet below. He waits for the spotter’s signal, and for the pilot to cut the engines. Then he steps into the sky. It’s summer 1944 and thousands of Americans his age are parachuting onto smoky World War II battlefields in Europe, Africa and Asia. This man’s war, though, is not against foreign troops. He’s a Montana smokejumper and a conscientious objector to that other war.

Smokejumpers made 1st drop in Idaho in 1940

at BillingsGazette.com

Thirty-seven years after Orville and Wilbur Wright ushered in the age of flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C., Rufus Robinson and Earl Cooley made flight history in northern Idaho. Flying out of Missoula in a Travelair piloted by Dick Johnson of the storied Johnson Flying Service, Robinson and Cooley parachuted onto a fire in the Nez Perce National Forest on July 12, 1940.

 

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