GQ gold parachute badge info sought on pilot

[arrestanddevelopment]

Hi

hopefully someone can help me with this one,i have a GQ gold parachute badge numbered 106 named C E RUSCOE 21st JANUARY 1943,it is possible he was american as this was aquired at a garage sale in the US.

any info pertaining to him would be appreciated.

thanks

Steve

[ehrentitle]

It's a GQ Club pin which is simular to the "Caterpillar Club" pin issued by other parachute makers. to sevicemembers who successfully used their parachutes. It was issued by GQ Parachutes (Later GQ Parachutes Limited) formed in 1932 which merged with Irvin Aerospace Limited (formerly Irvin Parachute) in 2001. I've seen several Caterpillar Cub pins but never one of these GQ Club Pins before.

Here is a review of a 1956 book called Into the Silk True stories of the Caterpillar Club that gives a good background on these badges.

Kevin

The full story of the birth and phenomenal growth of the Caterpillar Club all of whose members? lives have been saved by parachute descent from an aircraft in an emergency. By the beginning of the 21st Century it was estimated that more than 100,000 people internationally owed their lives to a parachute.

The Caterpillar Club was created in 1922 by Leslie Irvin, the American parachute pioneer who invented the ripcord-operated chute. Irvin pledged that he would donate a caterpillar pin to every person, anywhere in the world, who saved his or her life in an emergency with a parachute of his design. The club, he said, would have no social premises, charge no entrance fee, no subscription. The only class of membership would be life, the only privilege, ?its continued enjoyment.? The club would have no committee, patron or president ? just an honorary secretary. That role over the years has been performed by various members of the staff of the company Irvin formed ? the Irving Air Chute Company (the ?g? was mistakenly added to his name on registration and he couldn?t at that time afford to change it).

In the late 1950s Ian Mackersey set out to read each of the then 30,000 files of the club?s European branch at the Irving Air Chute factory at Letchworth in Hertfordshire. He traced and interviewed many of the survivors for the hundred stories that became the substance of the book. They included successful leaps into the silk from as low as fifty feet; others from great heights with descents taking half an hour and more. Escapes in which men shared their chutes with another who lacked one. Extraordinary events in which aircrew, flung out of their aircraft without parachutes, providentially caught hold of other men in mid-air. Even more remarkable were descents by individuals who could not be admitted to the club and receive its famous gold caterpillar pin because they had survived plunges to earth without a chute.

In 1977 Ian Mackersey updated the book, adding accounts of emergency descents made possible by dramatic advances in ejection seat escape technology. These new stories included that of the survival of a USAF SR-71 Blackbird pilot who, in January 1966, descended safely into the New Mexico desert after his Mach 3 aircraft broke up at an altitude of 78,000 feet, travelling at 2,000 miles an hour.

The Caterpillar Club is not the only one that awards insignia to those whose lives have been saved by parachute. Other chute manufacturers have also formed clubs. One, created in 1940, by the GQ Parachute Company at Woking in England, was called the GQ Club ? later changed to the Gold Club. In 2001 the name-corrected Irvin company and GQ merged to become Irvin-GQ Ltd.

[Lucky Guy]

It's a GQ Club pin which is simular to the "Caterpillar Club" pin issued by other parachute makers. to sevicemembers who successfully used their parachutes. It was issued by GQ Parachutes (Later GQ Parachutes Limited) formed in 1932 which merged with Irvin Aerospace Limited (formerly Irvin Parachute) in 2001. I've seen several Caterpillar Cub pins but never one of these GQ Club Pins before.

Hi, I was made a member of the GQ Gold Wings Club after having to bail out of a glider that was destroyed by lightning in 1999. The glider flight was a 30th birthday present and was to become a day to remember! You may be interested to read my story on the attachment to this link, there is also a link to BBC and ITV TV reconstructions of that days events. see:- http://sites.google.com/site/thebig4...theskiesagain/

I have set up a face book group for any other GQ Gold Wing or Irvin Caterpillar Club members to join if you are or know anyone who is a member of one of these exclusive clubs then please join/let them know of the group so that our stories can be shared. see :- http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=129034207147851

This is a link to the photo of my Gold GQ Badge, My name (G Cooper) and membership number is inscribed on the back together with the gold hall mark, there is also a photo of the Caterpillar Club badge and my ripcord. see:- http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pi...29034207147851

Regards Graeme