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*born ’27 july 1928’*
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(‘joseph william kittinger II’ is a retired ‘colonel’ in the ‘united states air force’ and a ‘USAF command pilot’)
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(following his initial operational assignment in fighter aircraft, he participated in Project Manhigh and Project Excelsior in 1960, setting a world record for the highest skydive from a height greater than 31 kilometres (19 mi))
(he was also the first man to make a solo crossing of the ‘Atlantic Ocean’ in a ‘gas balloon’)
(serving as a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, 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)
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(in 2012, at the age of 84, he participated in the ‘Red Bull Stratos’ project as capsule communicator, directing ‘felix baumgartner’ on his record-breaking 39-kilometer (24 mi) freefall from earth’s stratosphere, exceeding Kittinger’s earlier ‘freefall’ in 1960)
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