High-altitude flight has always posed serious threats to adventurous aviators. As early as the mid-1800s, pioneer balloonists discovered that if you fly too high, your nose, ears, and eyes bleed and the nitrogen in your blood boils away in an airborne version of the dreaded "bends." And then you die.

Among the many attempts to create a suit that would protect high-altitude aviators from the crippling or perhaps even fatal effects of flying in low-pressure environments was this model created by German scientists in 1944. This suit was tested in the cockpit of the Horten IX V-1 but was never used operationally Only black and white photos of this suit exist, so our suggested colors are purely hypothetical.