20,000 feet fall w/ no parachute

[oakranger]

I just read this from another forum and see if any of you guys may have heard about this.  Not sure if it is true.

Just found this on the Web:

"Alan Magee was a ball turret gunner on an American B-17 bomber that was shot up and began spinning out of control over France on Jan. 3, 1943. Magee's parachute was unusable, but he jumped anyway, losing consciousness as he fell about 20,000 feet. He crashed through the glass skylight of the St. Nazaire train station and suffered severe injuries. Yet Magee recovered, enjoying backpacking until his death at age 84. Magee's 4-mile plunge was well-documented, but it's not clear how he survived. Some believe the angle of the skylight deflected his fall."

[Serenity]

I just read this from another forum and see if any of you guys may have heard about this.  Not sure if it is true.

Just found this on the Web:

"Alan Magee was a ball turret gunner on an American B-17 bomber that was shot up and began spinning out of control over France on Jan. 3, 1943. Magee's parachute was unusable, but he jumped anyway, losing consciousness as he fell about 20,000 feet. He crashed through the glass skylight of the St. Nazaire train station and suffered severe injuries. Yet Magee recovered, enjoying backpacking until his death at age 84. Magee's 4-mile plunge was well-documented, but it's not clear how he survived. Some believe the angle of the skylight deflected his fall."

Saw it in I believe two books. Definitely in 303 BG by Osprey, and possibly in Masters of the Air.

[oakranger]

So it is true..........WOW!

There is a story to tell your kids

[phatzo]

I think even mythbusters looked at this

[mechanic]

I read of a young man who was on a regular para jump and both his chutes failed. He accepted that he was dead and just gave up. He was jumping over an open country with no buildings except one tiny shack made of corregated iron. He landed on the shack and survived with some minor spinal fractures and severe bruises. Apparently the shack was enough to break the fall. This was quite recent and definitely true.

[manurin]

many stories like this one, check this link: 

http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/ffallers.html

and this one (hope it'll never happen though  ):

http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-Long-Fall

[Angus]

This one I had heard. Think it was in the old BBC WW2 series.

   In March of 1944, Nicholas Alkemade was the tail gunner in a British Lancaster bomber on a night mission to Berlin when his plane was attacked by German fighters. When the captain ordered the crew to bail out, Alkemade looked back into the plane and discovered that his parachute was in flames. He chose to jump without a parachute rather than to stay in the burning plane. He fell 18,000 feet, landing in trees, underbrush, and drifted snow. He twisted his knee and had some cuts, but was otherwise alright.



Good link there manurin 

[indy007]

There's a video of a skydiver, taken from his head cam. First chute turns into a streamer, cutaway fails, reserve chute gets tangled. He hits the ground, and there's no sound for a few second.

Then he gets up, freaking out and jumping up and down. No broken bones, no injuries beyond bruises. Pretty amazing.

[Anaxogoras]

That's not even the world record, which is, iirc, about 30,000 ft.

Once you reach a an altitude high enough to reach terminal velocity in free fall, than it doesn't really matter how much higher you go, does it.

I like the story about the zeppelin crewmen who fell through the roof of a convent and landed on a bed.

[cpxxx]

None of this is comforting reading as I will spend the long holiday weekend dropping skydivers out the back. They've been threatening to give me a tandem skydive for a while now. I'll keep dodging that bullet after reading all that.

Having said that. We've only had a couple of malfunctions. One was on tandem skydive. There is nothing quite so scary as seeing a loose chute fluttering to the ground, until you realise there's no one in it. The other was a first time jumper who got badly tangled lines. I watched him drop and drop until he he deployed the reserve rather late. He wasn't too bothered. He was up again in another lift an hour or two later.

Another story I heard, which I didn't see on that website was of a USAF pilot who ejected over a high mountain range. His parachute didn't open but he miraculously landed on a slope in the snow like the RAF gunner but almost uninjured. Eventually he was picked up by a rescue team in a pick up truck. They threw his parachute in the back. As they descended passing 10,000 feet it opened as it was designed to do. I don't know if it's a true story or not. Anyone know?

[mechanic]

HTC: please model trees and farms to break our fall in AH2. We want the slim chance to survive a freefall with minor injuries. Snow, we need snow too please. Deep snow.