Freefall Record Holder Col. Joe Kittinger Dead At 94

Col. Joe Kittinger, who held the record for the longest freefall for 52 years, died Friday (Dec. 9, 2022) in Florida at the age of 94. He is survived by his wife Sherri. Kittinger was an Air Force captain and pilot who did three high-altitude parachute jumps from a gondola suspended from helium balloons in 1959 and 1960 as part of a test program to develop ejection systems for high altitude aircraft.

After two jumps from more than 14 miles, on Aug. 16, 1960, he rode the balloons to 102,800 feet. He reached a speed of more than 600 MPH on the way to the New Mexico desert below. “There’s no way you can visualize the speed,” Kittinger told Florida Trend magazine in 2011. “There’s nothing you can see to see how fast you’re going. You have no depth perception."

After the jumps, Kittinger served three tours as a fighter pilot, the last of which ended with him being shot down over North Vietnam in May of 1972. He spent 11 months in a POW camp. He retired in 1978 and settled in Orlando where he became a local celebrity. In 2011, he became a consultant for the effort that would finally break his record. In 2012 Austrian Felix Baumgartner jumped from 24 miles over New Mexico and went supersonic (844 MPH) during his freefall.