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SAVE THAT CHUTE!
It can get you out of a tight spot on the ground as well as in the air
After a bail-out or crash landing—save your parachute. It can clothe you, and it can serve as a rescue marker. It can do adapted to have more uses in an emergency than any other single item of flying equipment.
From the nylon canopy, the shroud lines, harness webbing, canvas, felt and rubber cord pins, a survivor can make sandals for his feet, boots, snow shoes or sail, fish hooks, blackjacks and sling shots. From all over the world have come reports of ingenious uses of parachute equipment by airmen who have returned from desert sands and arctic blizzards, jungle swamps and watery wastes, because they saved their chutes.
One wide-awake sergeant tried vainly to attract the attention of planes flying overhead, then touched a match to the rubberized harness cushion. The dense black smoke did a startling pretty to his rescue.
A pilot tied together the harness buckles and successfully kept his head above supply buckles. He was able to tie boot laces, an homemade fishing.
In the CBI, a wounded airman was carried through jungle swamps on a litter constructed from bamboo stakes and the nylon canopy.
For walking sandals, the seat-cushion rubber can be cut to the shape of the sole of the shoe; cut canvas can be cut into strips for tops and sewed on with the inner thread of the rigging lines, heel straps are made from the harness webbing. Such sandals, it has been reported, outlast most manufactured ones.
In the arctic regions, three or four layers of nylon make an ideal wrap-around for mukluks snow boots when cut and tied on like a puttee. They are windproof and help keep feet warm. Flat wires from control panels rigging can be used as an outer shoe, utilizing the shroud lines as lacings to hold the warm, flexible canopy as insoles.
For protection against snow-blindness, a two-and-one-half inch strip of the black felt from the seat cushion cover can be fashioned into a mask. One-eighth inch eye slits are large.
enough for vision, small enough to protect against glare. Elastic cord and hooks from the chute pack hold the mask over the eyes.
Shroud lines, when strong on a frame of bones, make satisfactory snow shoes.
When winds are unfavorable at sea, the canopy can be used as a life-raft sail; when winds are unfavorable, a sea anchor can be made with the chute pack and metal from seat or pack.
More than 50 uses of parachutes have been catalogued by men at the Arctic, Desert and Tropical Branch of ATTAC at Orlando, Fla., and at the Personal Equipment Laboratory at Wright Field.
The 24 shroud lines of parachutes in emergencies are as shelters—partic chute, protective. When they have burned inside the shelter, they have added all radiation; white light which facilitates aerial spotting by rescue planes.
Other important, but not commonlyknown uses of the parachute equipment for survival include:
(1) A simple sling shot made from a "Y"-bent tie-rod or other metal bar, elastic cord and harness webbing or canvas for a pellet holder. With practice, small birds, rabbits and squirrels can be killed.
(2) The single wire strand from the ripcord makes an ideal snare. Hand nets are easily made with nylon, poles and heavy wire from parapacks.
(3) Flashing some sail and hand nets are easily made with nylon, poles and heavy wire from parapacks.
(4) The sponge rubber seat cushion can be used as a life preserver, will keep a man afloat for hours.
(5) The 24 shroud lines can be used for tying and lashing or as lifelines. Cut open, the shroud lines are made up of 7 to 9 corelings which can be used for sewing clothes, weaving or as fishlines.
Whether the chute is used as a knapsack, for bindness, or mummifying, or for barter with the natives, it can be a survivor's most valuable possession in any part of the world. Never abandon it, keep it with you always for it can save your neck in more ways than one.
Q1: What is the purpose of the "Save That Chute" guide?
A1: It's a WWII survival guide instructing downed airmen to keep their parachute after a bailout or crash landing, since its materials could be repurposed for dozens of survival needs.
Q2: What could airmen make from parachute materials?
A2: Airmen fashioned sandals, boots, snowshoes, sails, fish hooks, slingshots, snow goggles, and even shelters from a parachute's nylon canopy, shroud lines, harness webbing, and seat cushion.
Q3: How could a parachute help attract rescuers?
A3: One sergeant reportedly burned the rubberized harness cushion to create dense black smoke as a signal, and shroud lines could also be used to reflect light for aerial spotting.
Q4: Where were these parachute survival uses documented?
A4: More than 50 cataloged uses came from the Arctic, Desert and Tropical Branch of ATTAC at Orlando, Florida, and the Personal Equipment Laboratory at Wright Field.
Q5: Could a parachute provide flotation in a water landing?
A5: Yes. The sponge rubber seat cushion could serve as a life preserver capable of keeping a downed airman afloat for hours.
This page preserves a piece of wartime aircrew survival instruction commonly known as "Save That Chute," almost certainly reprinted from a period publication such as Air Force magazine or a training pamphlet, given its catalog-style format and its direct citation of the Arctic, Desert and Tropical Branch of ATTAC (Air Transport Command's testing arm) at Orlando, Florida, and the Personal Equipment Laboratory at Wright Field.
What the document is
At its core, this is field-tested survival doctrine, not theoretical advice. It instructs airmen who bailed out or crash-landed to treat their parachute as a multipurpose survival kit rather than discarding it after use. The piece systematically walks through the parachute's individual components, the nylon canopy, shroud lines, harness webbing, seat cushion, and metal hardware, and explains how each could be repurposed into footwear, shelter, signaling devices, hunting and fishing tools, cold-weather protection, and flotation aids.
Why this kind of document existed
By the mid-war period, the Army Air Forces had grown acutely aware that survival after bailout was its own distinct combat problem, separate from the mission itself. Crews were increasingly operating over remote, hostile, or simply unforgiving terrain: Arctic routes, Pacific island-hopping campaigns, Southeast Asian jungle theaters (the reference to "the CBI," China-Burma-India, is telling), and open ocean. This piece reflects a broader institutional effort, formalized through dedicated testing branches like the one at Orlando, to systematically catalog and disseminate survival techniques rather than leave them to individual improvisation and luck. The claim that "more than 50 uses" had been cataloged suggests a genuinely rigorous, tested body of knowledge rather than folklore.
Specific techniques worth noting
Several details stand out as historically grounded rather than generic survival advice: the description of cutting seat-cushion rubber into sandal soles with harness webbing for heel straps and rigging thread for stitching is specific enough to reflect actual field practice, as is the multi-layer nylon mukluk wrap for arctic conditions and the felt eye-slit mask for snow blindness. The account of a sergeant using burning harness cushion to generate visible black smoke, and of a downed airman being carried on a bamboo-and-canopy litter through CBI jungle swamps, read as real incident reports rather than invented examples, giving the document credibility as a compilation of genuine field experience rather than a purely instructional exercise.
Historical value
Documents like this one illuminate a less-discussed but essential dimension of the air war: what happened to a crew after the mission went wrong. Alongside combat records, decorations, and unit histories, survival literature like "Save That Chute" captures the practical, often improvisational knowledge that determined whether a downed airman made it home. It is a valuable artifact precisely because it was written for use, not for the historical record, and it preserves the lived, tested wisdom of aircrews and equipment specialists working through real emergencies across wildly different environments during the war.
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