Departures of note

Giovanni “John” Carta, born in Alghero, Italy, on January 7, 1946, was a decorated Vietnam War veteran who piloted Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopters on rescue missions and received the War Cross for Military Valor. After the war, he reinvented himself as a BASE jumping pioneer, earning the nickname “Birdman” for his experimental use of bat wings during parachute launches.

Carta gained notoriety for a series of daring and illegal jumps. In 1981, he parachuted onto the roof of the World Trade Center in New York. The following year, he launched himself from a tower of the Verrazzano Bridge. In 1986, he jumped from the Foresthill Bridge in California on a motorcycle, deploying his parachute and leaving the bike to smash in the canyon below. In 1987, he jumped from the Leaning Tower of Pisa and later from the George Washington Bridge, after missing the World Trade Center and landing in a construction zone, leading to his arrest on reckless endangerment charges. The charges were dismissed, and he jumped from the George Washington Bridge again after retrieving his confiscated gear.

On August 16, 1990, Carta broke his back when his parachute failed during a jump from an office building in Oakland, California. He was charged with trespassing, but the charge was dropped due to his injuries. Just over a month later, on September 29, 1990, Carta was killed when the Lockheed PV-2 Harpoon aircraft in which he was a passenger crashed during an impromptu aerobatics display over Clear Lake, California.