Navy Mark IV - Pre-Mercury Development

Pre-Mercury Development

The suit was designed by Russell Colley (who designed and built the high-altitude pressure suit worn by aviator Wiley Post) as a means of providing an Earth-like atmosphere in the unpressurized high-altitude fighter jets developed by the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy after the Korean War. The Mark IV suit was first introduced in the late 1950s. Prior to the development of the Mark IV suit, the Navy developed different types of the Mark-series full-pressure suits, but all the suits before the Mark IV had problems with both mobility and weight.

The Mark IV suit solved the mobility problems with the use of elastic cord which arrested the "ballooning" of the suit, and at 22 lb., was the lightest pressure suit developed for military use. The most severe test of the suit occurred during the record-setting balloon flight of Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather in the Strato-Lab V unpressurized gondola to 113,740 feet (34,670 m) on May 4, 1961. With the advent of pressurized cockpits, and the David Clark Company's contract with the U.S. Air Force and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (later NASA) for a full pressure suit for the X-15 rocket plane, the suit fell out of use.