Operation High Dive
Encyclopedia
Operation High Dive was a secret project carried out during the 1950s by the United States Air Force
. It tested high-altitude parachutes using anthropomorphic dummies
. The dummies went into a 200 rpm
flat spin, which would be fatal to a human. Further investigations on this led to Project Excelsior
. It may later have been confused with Project Mogul
and thus helped form the account of the Roswell UFO Incident
.
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
. It tested high-altitude parachutes using anthropomorphic dummies
Crash test dummy
Crash test dummies are full-scale anthropomorphic test devices that simulate the dimensions, weight proportions and articulation of the human body, and are usually instrumented to record data about the dynamic behavior of the ATD in simulated vehicle impacts...
. The dummies went into a 200 rpm
Revolutions per minute
Revolutions per minute is a measure of the frequency of a rotation. It annotates the number of full rotations completed in one minute around a fixed axis...
flat spin, which would be fatal to a human. Further investigations on this led to Project Excelsior
Project Excelsior
Project Excelsior was a series of high-altitude parachute jumps made by Colonel Joseph Kittinger of the United States Air Force in 1959 and 1960 to test the Beaupre multi-stage parachute system...
. It may later have been confused with Project Mogul
Project Mogul
Project Mogul was a top secret project by the US Army Air Forces involving microphones flown on high altitude balloons, whose primary purpose was long-distance detection of sound waves generated by Soviet atomic bomb tests. The project was carried out from 1947 until early 1949...
and thus helped form the account of the Roswell UFO Incident
Roswell UFO incident
The Roswell UFO Incident was the recovery of an object that crashed in the general vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico, in June or July 1947, allegedly an extra-terrestrial spacecraft and its alien occupants. Since the late 1970s the incident has been the subject of intense controversy and of...
.