John Stringfellow flight achievement was referenced in the movie "The Flight of the Phoenix" (1965). The character Heinrich Dorfmann (Hardy Kruger), a German airplane designer, explains that it was a model airplane that made the first powered flight in 1848 and that though his own experience with airplane design is with building models, the principles are the same. His design for an airplane to be built from the scraps of their crashed plane will fly them out of the desert to safety. John Stringfellow John Stringfellow (1799 – 13 December 1883) was born in Sheffield, England and is known for his work
Aircrew survival equipmentman changed to its present title of aircrew survival equipmentman in December, 1965. The reason for changing the title from parachute rigger to aircrew survival equipmentman was to provide a more realistic description of the types of duties performed by PRs. However, aircrew survival equipmentmen maintained their official abbreviated title of "PR" after the 1965 name change. Following a fatal training accident in the 1980s, students are no longer required to complete the basic parachute jump to earn their rating badge. United States Navy parachute riggers are now trained at Naval Air Station Pensacola during a twelve-week (55 training days) school