about Tiny
Tiny Broadwick made more than 1,000 jumps from airplanes and balloons, enduring and surviving several harrowing mishaps. She landed on top of a train, she got tangled up in a windmill and in high-tension wires. She suffered numerous injuries along the way– broken bones, sprained ankles and a wrenched back. Tiny loved her work and looked back on those days with great fondness in her later years.
From Balloons to Airplanes
It In 1912, Tiny went from jumping out of balloons to jumping out of planes at the suggestion of Glenn L. Martin, an early barnstormer and aviation pioneer. No woman had jumped out of a plane before and he thought the addition of a woman to his aerial act would spice things up.
Tiny's First Airplane Jump
Tiny sat on a seat behind the wing and outside the cockpit that worked like a trap door. When the plane reached an altitude of two thousand feet, she released a lever next to the seat and dropped. A line was fastened to the fuselage and woven through the canvas cover of her parachute; when she dropped, the static line pulled open the cover, allowing the parachute to fill with air.
It was “the most wonderful sensation in the world! From up in the air I can appreciate the beauty of the earth from a new perspective and felt that I was in the presence of God.”
Robert V. “Bob” Lewis