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D-Day Preparations Didn't Include What Could Have Saved Many Lives

The WASHINGTON
Merry-Go-Round
By Drew Pearson

NAVY STILL HESITATES

Washington --- The question of the quick-release parachute harness is still causing considerable backing-and-filling inside the armed services, this time in the Navy.
   Although the Army delayed for months after Brig. Gen. Newton Longfellow of the U.S. Eighth Air Force in England requested the quick-release harness on June 1, 1943, nevertheless the Army did jump in at top speed last month, after revelations in this column, and ordered more than 100,000 of the quick single releases.
   Furthermore, Colonel C. B. Degave, second in command at Camp Mackall, N.C., where eight paratroopers drowned when they were unable to extricate themselves from, their triple-release harnesses, came to Washington last month, requested and got the promise of new quick-release harnesses.

[The Circleville Herald, Circleville, OH, Monday, April 17, 1944, Page 4]

  

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