-
![LANG-CODE-KEY]()
LANG_NAME_KEY
Anywhere more than a couple of feet from terra firma is not exactly a natural condition for Homo sapiens. Standing atop the glass floor of the CN Tower is still something of a leap of faith, even if the guides assure you that it can take the weight of two hippos. Not sure how many hippopotami one encounters in Toronto, or even how they managed to fit into the elevator to get up there, but I guess it was supposed to be reassuring. I doubt I’d be reassured if I discovered I were sharing a glass floor several hundred meters up in a confined room with a hippo.
This is a result of the various evolutionary trends which have resulted in us humans not having functional wings, yet despite this probably being a good decision by our ancestors, we have for some reason had a desire to fly anyway. (I now have images of Red Skelton’s introduction scene in Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines in my head). So we created the aeroplane, which comes with its own hazards, and like anything made by man, they are fallible. Sometimes they are fallible with a little extra help, such as a battery of .303 machineguns from another aeroplane.
So what does man do when his creation fails? If you’re lucky, you have a parachute. Most people who fly don’t have one. Your next best bet is to find a friend who has a parachute, as Australian Lancaster pilot Joe Herman did -- he encountered his top gunner on the way down and held onto him. Absent that? Flapping frantically doesn’t help much. Screaming might make you feel better, but probably doesn’t help either. Regardless, standard operating procedure is to hurtle in a downward direction until meeting a point of some resistance. Usually the ground. Common consensus is that the next step of the process is to expire. There are, however, some rebels out there who refuse to go with the pack, and live.
The Guinness Book of Records lists the greatest rebel as being a Vesna Vulović, a flight attendent whose DC-9 fell apart and, well, fell. The official story is that the DC-9 was destroyed by a bomb whilst flying at about 33,000 feet. She was found, with a few broken bones in the center section of the wreckage above the wings. Apparently it would have taken over two minutes for her to hit the ground between "What the…?" and "Ouch." Granted, there would have been a blackout for some of that due to either shock or hypoxia, but still, even from 15,000 feet or so, there’s still a minute to go. What goes through your mind? Do you even try!?
Interestingly, there is a recent claim that in fact the aircraft was shot down by the Czech air defence network at a much lower altitude, the bomb-in-cruise-flight was simply a cover-up. Perhaps our EU counterparts can update us a bit.
If it turns out that Vesna’s not the lead rebel, it seems that the next contender for the title is an American by the name of Alan Magee. A far less dramatic story, his B-17 was hit at about 22,000 feet and it was a choice of either crash in the airplane, or crash not in it. So out he went. He landed in the Saint Nazaire train station, crashing through its glass roof. How much that helped, I don’t know, but in any case, he survived and even attended the dedication of the memorial to his aircraft and crew in the town in 1995.
It would appear that Magee is closely in competetion by a Soviet officer, Ivan Mikhailovich Chisov. His first error was getting into an IL-4. Okay, maybe Bob wasn’t that bad of an aircraft, but the Germans certainly took exception to it and shot it down at about 22,000 feet. Ivan, however, made a bit of an error in his plan. Granted, being shot down is a significant emotional event that may affect your judgement. He did have a parachute. That was the good move. The bad move was that he decided not to open it.
Apparently he was afraid he might get shot as an easy target on the way down. What did happen on the way down was that he blacked out, either from shock or just hypoxia, and made the significant error in failing to regain consciousness until after he had come to rest. Thanks to the snow, trees, and sloped terrain, they all appeared to have slowed him down gently enough that he just had a few broken bones and damaged his spine.
What does go through your mind as you fall? Apparently, it’s “Might as well enjoy the view”, according to Nicholas Alkemade. A tail gunner on a Lancaster, his parachute was consumed by a fire on the aircraft. Faced with a choice of burning to death or a quicker death by impact, he decided to exit the aircraft. The fall of about 18,000 feet under the starry sky was described as "a pleasant experience." After landing in trees and then 18” of snow, he lit a cigarette, and just relaxed for a few minutes before trying to get up. Turned out he couldn’t get up because he had a sprained leg. Oddly, the Germans didn’t believe him for a while.
Now these are all pretty interesting stories, but I’m not sure you’ll do much better than Juliane Koepcke. Now, it seems a little weak in comparison. She only went down 10,000 feet, and she never unstrapped herself from the chair of the Lockheed Electra until after she was on the ground. In fairness, the chair unstrapped itself from the Lockheed Electra before then. But the folks listed above were all found pretty shortly after their exit from uncontrolled flight. Juliane, however… Well, I’ll just let you read for yourself.
As a final note, I have not been able to ascertain while researching this article the record for the longest known survived freefall by a hippopotamus without a parachute.
The Chieftain is Wargaming America's resident tank guru. If you'd like to stay abreast of his comings and goings, feel free to "Like" The Chieftain on Facebook and follow The Chieftain on Twitter.
303rd Bomb Group (H). "20,000 Feet - Without a Chute, The Alan Magee Story." Accessed January 11, 2013. http://www.303rdbg.com/magee.html.
Wikipedia. "No. 466 Squadron RAAF." Accessed January 11, 2013. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._466_Squadron_RAAF.
Wikipedia. "Ivan Chisov." Access January 11, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Chisov.
Juliane Koepcke, "Juliane Koepcke: How I survived a plane crash," BBC News, Accessed January 11, 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17476615.
Parachute History. "Chuteless Jumps." Accessed January 11, 2013, http://www.parachutehistory.com/other/bonusday.html.
