The Caterpillar Club: When Silk Was a Parachute

Named After the Animal

Airmen whose lives were saved by bailing out formed an informal association called the Caterpillar Club — named for the silkworm, because the parachute that saved them was made of silk.

Its motto: "Life depends on a silken thread."

1785

Silk was used by J. P. Blanchard in 1785 to make the first parachute without a rigid frame — the innovation that made the parachute a thing you could carry rather than a structure you descended beneath.

That change is entirely a materials story. A canopy that folds and deploys needs a fabric that is light, extremely strong for its weight, and packs small. In 1785 there was exactly one option.

"Parachute Silk"

By the First World War the demand was industrial enough to have its own name: parachute silk, produced specifically for military parachutes. The same properties that make silk a luxury textile — strength-to-weight, fineness, drape — are the properties that make it a canopy.

What Replaced It

Nylon, during the Second World War, as silk supply diminished. The supply problem was geopolitical: silk came largely from Asia, and the war cut the routes.

Nylon was not obviously better at first. It was available, which in wartime is the same thing.

The Afterlife

Wartime parachute silk has a well-documented second life: canopies were unpicked and sewn into wedding dresses, at a time when fabric was rationed and a bride had few options. Museum and library collections hold examples.

Why It Belongs in a Silkworm Encyclopedia

Because it is the clearest case of the pattern. Silk's strength-to-weight ratio is genuinely exceptional, and for a century and a half that meant it was the material you trusted with your life when you jumped out of an aeroplane.

An animal bred for cloth, holding up airmen.

Related: silk in medicine · the history of sericulture