After racing speedboats as a teenager, he entered the U.S. He became fascinated with planes at a very young age and soloed in a Piper Cub by the time he was 17. JSTOR ( May 2017) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Д«orn in Tampa, Florida, and raised in Orlando, Florida, Kittinger was educated at The Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida, and the University of Florida.Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful.

This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. (USAF AFP-190-2-2 published July 1, 1963) However, Baumgartner's world record would be broken just two years later by Alan Eustace. Kittinger participated in the Red Bull Stratos project as capsule communicator in 2012 at age 84, directing Felix Baumgartner on his record-breaking 24-mile (39В km) freefall from Earth's stratosphere, which broke Kittinger's own 53-year-old world record of 102,800 feet (31.3 km) set on August 16, 1960. Kittinger served as a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, and he achieved an aerial kill of a North Vietnamese MiG-21 jet fighter and was later shot down himself, spending 11 months as a prisoner of war in a North Vietnamese prison. He was also the first man to make a solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a gas balloon, and the first man to fully witness the curvature of the Earth. His initial operational assignment was in fighter aircraft, then he participated in Project Manhigh and Project Excelsior high-altitude balloon flight projects from 1956 to 1960, setting a world record for the highest skydive from a height greater than 19 miles (31В km). First person to conduct stratospheric space divingД¬olonel Joseph William Kittinger II (born July 27, 1928) is a retired officer in the United States Air Force (USAF) and a Command Pilot.

Kittinger furniture serial numbers