Video script:

Look up! See the man in the sky? His name was Clive Collett, and he was born right here in Marlborough.

When the war began, he worked on a ship to pay for his trip to England. Once he got there, he learned to fly at a private flying school. After a year of training, he joined the Royal Flying Corps.

Clive became one of New Zealand’s most skilled pilots. He flew about 12,000 hours in at least 46 different kinds of planes! But his most amazing achievement was in January 1917, when he became the very first person to jump from a Royal Flying Corps aeroplane using a parachute.

This was a huge deal. Before this, only balloonists had parachutes. Jumping out of a moving plane was much trickier — and Clive did it successfully, not once but twice! Sadly, the British didn’t keep using parachutes, even though German pilots started using them in 1918.