ON A bright day in 1912, an Austrian tailor named Franz Reichelt jumped off the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. This was no suicide attempt. Reichelt was wearing a special overcoat of his own design that was supposed to let him glide gently to the ground. Sadly, it didn't work. As the crowd watched and movie cameras whirred, the "flying tailor" plunged 60 metres to his death.

Landing in a wingsuit without a parachute presents a few challenges (Image: James Boole)
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Over the next few decades, up until the 1960s, daredevil showmen continued to experiment with homemade wings of canvas, wood or silk – with one crucial difference. These so-called "Birdmen" relied on parachutes to land; the wings were just there to let them "fly" on the way down. Even so, many died, usually when their wings interfered with the parachute. The idea fell out of vogue until the introduction of safer commercial wingsuits in the 1990s.


Video: Wingsuit skydiving

Now a small group of fearless – some would say foolhardy – wingsuit enthusiasts is reviving the dream of the very first birdmen. Their ambition is to jump out of a plane, glide thousands of metres and land in one piece – without a parachute.

At least two teams around the world are bent on tackling this pinnacle of extreme sports, and they have very different approaches in mind. In the race to be the first, secrecy rules, but the leading contenders have revealed some tantalising details of what they hope will be – only metaphorically, of course – a ground-breaking achievement.

A modern wingsuit is a full-body outfit with wings of tough nylon sewn between the arms and the torso, and between the legs: think Las Vegas-era Elvis crossed with a flying squirrel. During free fall, the airflow inflates the wings to form aerofoils, creating lift and turning a one-dimensional drop into a three-dimensional glide. While skydivers usually fall at terminal velocity – about 195 kilometres per hour – a wingsuit flier falls at only 80 to 100 km/h while travelling horizontally at 115 to 160 km/h. Skilled fliers can perform surprisingly precise aerial manoeuvres, including briefly slowing their vertical descent to zero and even gliding upwards a short distance at the end of a swooping dive. Daring individuals have skimmed as low as 5 metres above sloping ground.

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