In 1991, Bill Wattenburg was the first person to demonstrate that small food packages can be safely dropped by cargo planes at high altitude, as is now being done to fed the refugees in Afghanistan . (see "Dropping food packages to refugees without using parachutes," Science , 2 April 1993, page 27. Also San Francisco Chronicle , 23 March 1993, front page). This eliminates the great expense of parachutes and the danger to our flight crews when they must fly at low altitude to drop large food pallets by parachute over hostile areas. But relief officials and the U.S. military would not try his idea for several years -- until a fortunate sequence of events took place.
