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First flier

As a young fella working in the research lab at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, Jack Tiffany spent countless hours testing the performance of various aircraft components inside the facility’s vertical wind tunnel.

In 1966, he was part of the team working at breakneck pace to develop re-entry parachutes for NASA’s Gemini spacecraft. An experienced skydiver with some 200 jumps at the time, Tiffany got a little nutty late one night and decided to test his performance inside the tunnel. “We were running damn near around the clock,” he told Military Times. “It was 2 a.m., and everyone was a little slap-happy. I said: ‘Fire this puppy up. I think I can fly.’ They fired it up, and I flew.”

He is reportedly the first person to do so. In the four decades since, simulated free fall has become a multimillion-dollar industry. Tunnels have been built all over the world to cater to recreational skydivers and competitive parachutists looking to hone their techniques. And although it took awhile for the military to embrace Tiffany’s groundbreaking stunt, it too relies on wind tunnels to train paratroopers and others for whom jumping is part of the job.

Now 68, Tiffany lives in Spring Valley, Ohio, where he restores antique airplanes for a living. He has enjoyed a relatively quiet life, serving for 13 years in the Army Reserve’s Special Forces and running his own skydiving venture. Looking back, he regards his experiment at Wright-Patterson as a logical advancement in the evolution of skydiving — nothing more.

“In free fall, you don’t get that much time to work on body position, and what you can and can’t do,” he said. “To get extended air time, this was a natural progression.”

That’s pretty humble. But to skydiving’s thousands of devotees, Tiffany is the man whose ingenuity launched a revolution.