Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: MwRod on September 23, 2002, 04:46:03 AM
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Going thru My father's Notes and books. father was a pilot in ww2 and Korea,
I came accross something I never heard before from him,while he was alive. He tells of story watching a Jet pilot refuel and catch fire. Pilots canopy will not blow when pilot pulls cutain. pilot manually opens canopy and jumps out. His chute does not open and he falls from 3 miles up into ocean. He says the "son of a squeak lives". (his own words). I can't read his name well but think its Lt. Judgston or close to it. Does anyone know of this incident and the name of pilot. Had to be a marine or navy pilot and inlate 50's to early 60's I think.
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Thats a MARINE for ya.;)
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Originally posted by Monk
Thats a MARINE for ya.;)
hehe..yup.
His drill instructor obviously did not give him PERMISSION to die.;)
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He may have lived, but I'll bet he died of internal injuries soon after. Hitting water, especially SALT water (denser) is like hitting concrete, once at terminal velocity, they're roughly the same. Could be he had a "streamer" too.
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I have heard of a pilot falling many thousands of feet and landing on the steep, icy side of a mountain and living. Hitting the water sounds like a sure bet splat to me.
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Maybe his chute opened only partially and reduced his landing speed enough for him to survive..
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There is a readers Digest story of an Allied bomber crewman falling, no streamer, no chute at all in fact, nearly 18,000 feet, and landing behind German lines in a marsh.
The german troops in the area found him alive, and upon turning him over to whoever gets prisoners, these Germans declared him PNG, an act of God or whatever, and sent him up through the lines back to Allied forces.
It's been probably 10 years since I've read it, and I never had the interest in WW2 then that I do now, so I'll have to do some checking to find the story.
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Originally posted by Hussein
Maybe his chute opened only partially and reduced his landing speed enough for him to survive..
See "Streamer" above.
Gman, I remember reading that too. Believeable. But, not into just plain water. Thats like a brick.
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Well, if you hit the water "just right" (fully extended like a pencil, feet first)... the chances of surviving that are fairly high.
But your feet can't be flat, otherwise they'll hit the water like their hitting the ground and buckle your legs.
-SW
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Originally posted by AKSWulfe
Well, if you hit the water "just right" (fully extended like a pencil, feet first)...-SW
Hehe........of course then you rocket yourself 3 miles deep :eek:
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You decelerate pretty quick in water, especially since the water has more force, the various bends and angles in your body (such as the feet being at a slight angle) will push you more into a curve than straight down.
Either way, it's possible..
-SW
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I was told pine trees are a better target to aim for than water if your chute fails. You'll smash youself up pretty good if you do manage to live through it but I read somewhere that statistically you stand a better chance of survival. The soft branches slow you gradually over a 60ft drop.
Gatso
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Gatso, maybe so... but how would you like the cause of deceleration to be a couple of branches to the nutz?
Not too fun I imagine.
-SW
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Originally posted by AKSWulfe
Either way, it's possible..
-SW
Rgr, anything is possible.
How about this, your planes crashes, you step off just as it hits the ground, do you live?
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Originally posted by Gman
There is a readers Digest story of an Allied bomber crewman falling, no streamer, no chute at all in fact, nearly 18,000 feet, and landing behind German lines in a marsh.
The german troops in the area found him alive, and upon turning him over to whoever gets prisoners, these Germans declared him PNG, an act of God or whatever, and sent him up through the lines back to Allied forces.
It's been probably 10 years since I've read it, and I never had the interest in WW2 then that I do now, so I'll have to do some checking to find the story.
I'll back ya up on that Gman...I read it too. No idea where to find it though.
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Sure, it's possible... but then again, I never said it was common or highly likely..
I mean, it's highly likely you'll survive if you get into the proper position and everything works your way...
then again, it's still highly improbable it will all come together and work in your favor. ;)
-SW
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I think I wrote that wrong, your right anything is possible. The question about the plane is a serious question. Would that be possible?
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What kind of plane? How fast? What kind of clothes are you wearing? Do you fall to the ground and roll on soft, wet grass?
etc... there's a lot of factors that would play into this situation.
Dropping and rolling off a Cessna 172 in ski pants and a ski jacket into wet (or snowy) grass would be far more survivable than jumping off... well something going a lot faster over pavement or concrete with shorts and a T-Shirt on..
-SW
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Depends ... Monk.. too many variables...
SKurj
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All He says is he broke multiable bones in his legs and back but lived, Remember you fall at about 120mph.
what I need is ideas on how to find this mans name. any help would be nice.
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Thats amazing. Maybe its some aerodynamic up wind flow phenomena thing that is self balancing and the guy isnt actually going so fast. :)
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Maybe God didn't want him. :(
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Im willing to bet though (my personal opinion) that he musta been yanking on the RIP like mad. Good thing for him he was lucky thus far or some see it as unlucky to begin with. He probably has a natural good frame work for that sorta thing, I mean landing like that and all and not dying. Anything past 40 mph is quite terminal, wierd how some make it and some dont. I goto see it to believe it though as there are alot of legends in this world, like bigfoot and the lochness etc... Rambo?
I've seen pictures of bigfoot and the lochness, looks real enough, still questionable though...
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Well, if you hit the water "just right" (fully extended like a pencil, feet first)... the chances of surviving that are fairly high.
But your feet can't be flat, otherwise they'll hit the water like their hitting the ground and buckle your legs.
:rolleyes:
This would be a great chance for a Darwin Award. Any takers?
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I've read a whole book about parachuting accidents. Yeah, many people have survived when their chutes didnt open at all. Terminal velocity is ~120mph for a man, so its not that unbelivable. Pine trees are very good for landing in. While I havent seen anyone actually fall into a pine tree before, I have seen many balsa-wood r/c airplanes fly into pine trees and not have a scratch on them.
Heres some notable cases- Lancaster tail gunner falls 20,000 feet after he starts to burn up and he falls into a pine tree and 18 inches of snow. He breaks his pelvis and spends the rest of the war as a POW.
1950s fighter pilot bails out, ejection seat fails to seperate from him, he hits ground (amputates both legs) but survives.
A navy seal was doing a c-130 rope extraction (where a c-130 picks up a seal by flying low over the ground and snagging a rope attached to a seal). Anways, the seal gets picked up, and the c-130 flys out over the ocean. The rope breaks, so the seal angles his body at 45 degrees and stiffens up. The force of the impact of the water was said to have cut the Seal in half.
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If you fell from three miles up it would take you a minute and a half to hit the ground and I imagine by that time you'd have already gotten past the 10 seconds of "woe is me" and the 20 seconds of "I'll miss my wife and kids" and that still gives you a whole minute of the "I better learn how to fly" mindset. All this proves is that if man can't actually fly they can, indeed, flap their arms a la Sylvester the Cat when the tightrope breaks to at least come to a semi-controlled landing they may survive. That Marine adapted and overcame because that's what Marines do. Semper fi.
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Thats a toejamty way to die and a long time to be disappointed that you are about to meet your maker. Kinda makes you wish you were a giant on your way down like jack in the bean stock or something. Of all people, why my parachute.
:)
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On Icebreakers (well, finnish virtual pilots) pages theres story of Brewster pilot who survived a direct crash in the ice.. not one of those 'crash landings' where pilots usually are still alive.
He dived dived and dived, then hit the ice and the collision ejected the seat, which then landed on the it's backside and then continued to ski on the ice, digging a tunnel in the snow, where from the pilot soon after woke up, still seated.
Everything left of the plane was some of the engine block and part of the tail.
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How high does a person have to be to reach terminal velocity? And how fast is terminal velocity?
BTW, me and some buddies used to jump off some local bridges, one of which is about 60 ft high. Even at that seemingly short height, there was enough time in the fall to skeeer the crap outa you. Much arm wailing to get balance to point toes in and "toothpick" into the water. We thought we were brave mofo's just jumping from the sidewalk, til some crazy dude stood on the handrail and did a swan dive. :eek:
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Well, I'm horrible at math, but not counting wind resistance, a person would fall at 32 feet per second per second. So at the end of the first second you would be falling 32 feet per second. At the end of the 2nd second, you would be falling 64 feet per second.
60 mph is 88 feet per second, so 120mph (terminal velocity for a person falling flat) is 176 feet per second.
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Hello wanted Ideas on how to find out about this pilot, Not debate if or how. and yes its 120 mph fall.
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Originally posted by gatso
I was told pine trees are a better target to aim for than water if your chute fails. You'll smash youself up pretty good if you do manage to live through it but I read somewhere that statistically you stand a better chance of survival. The soft branches slow you gradually over a 60ft drop.
Gatso
I wonder if HT will implement this theory in the next version of AH.......hmmm:p
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Originally posted by Monk
Rgr, anything is possible.
How about this, your planes crashes, you step off just as it hits the ground, do you live?
Simple physics. Your plane is traveling at 100 MPH, if you are in the plane, you are also traveling at 100 MPH.
If the plane hits the ground at 100 mph, and you step off the plane 1 second before the plane hits the ground, you are still traveling at 100 mph (minus the frictional forces that would slow you down slightly after leaving the a/c)
So yeah, you're still dead
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What if you jumped satraight up at the last possible second? That should neutralize the fall of the plane and leave you floating in the air for a moment before gravity regained control of you. The trick would be to wait until the last instant before you jumped up. Otherwise if you jump off the plane at 200 feet elevation you'd still fall 200 feet.
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Originally posted by Elfenwolf
What if you jumped satraight up at the last possible second? That should neutralize the fall of the plane and leave you floating in the air for a moment before gravity regained control of you. The trick would be to wait until the last instant before you jumped up. Otherwise if you jump off the plane at 200 feet elevation you'd still fall 200 feet.
How much force is needed to get your body to fall at however fast it would be falling if you jumped out of the plane? I would imagine that you would have to jump with slightly more than that force. Therefore I would imagine that your being an elf that your legs aren't that strong so you probably couldn't jump with enough force to counteract the gravity force and force from the airplane. Therefore you'd still be dead.
BUT :D
Had you called yourself skywalker, Dvader, vader, anny, HandSolo, Leah or any other Star Wars name instead of Elfenwolf that you would instead be able to use the force instead of the force using you and then you'd probably still be alive.
AND :D
Since you're the only one here who's survived a long fall, please tell us how you did it. :eek:
:D
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Who in the world can jump straight up at 100mph?
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Is this a Monty Python sketch??
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How about this, you have a big overcoat on and you jump out. Could you glide and slow yourself to the ground.
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Originally posted by Elfenwolf
What if you jumped satraight up at the last possible second? That should neutralize the fall of the plane and leave you floating in the air for a moment before gravity regained control of you. The trick would be to wait until the last instant before you jumped up. Otherwise if you jump off the plane at 200 feet elevation you'd still fall 200 feet.
Ya Elfenwolf has it, the Elevator effect.
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Originally posted by Elfenwolf
What if you jumped satraight up at the last possible second? That should neutralize the fall of the plane and leave you floating in the air for a moment before gravity regained control of you. The trick would be to wait until the last instant before you jumped up. Otherwise if you jump off the plane at 200 feet elevation you'd still fall 200 feet.
Looney Tunes physics for the masses. ;)
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Work = Force * displacement (this applies only to straight upwards)
So if 90kg object wants to overcome 200kmh dive in one second, the equation looks like this:
W = 900n * 55 meters (per Sec) =49500 nm
This isnt even enough, since force applies to both surfaces equally, which kills some of your work depending how heavy the object underneath is.
I highly doubt, that legs can produce over 49500 joules of energy in a second..:eek:
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silly people. if you jumped off the plane 1 seconds before it hits the ground it wont matter how fast you go.
You'll be caught in the biggest fireball of your already ending life anyway.
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Ah, yes... well damn those people who survived flying out of car windows at 120+MPH....
So you see, anything is possible depending on the sicheation.
-SW
ps: Piper cubs land at ~60mph, head on wrecks at +200MPH, people (namely drunks) still live through those, including the ones that fly out the window.
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Originally posted by Tac
silly people. if you jumped off the plane 1 seconds before it hits the ground it wont matter how fast you go.
You'll be caught in the biggest fireball of your already ending life anyway.
Not if you threw a big bucket of water up in the air just before you jumped.
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Originally posted by hblair
Not if you threw a big bucket of water up in the air just before you jumped.
That would be impossible because the water is falling at the same rate you and the airplane are. I suggest turning off the motors before impact to reduce the chance of a fire.
Look, I realize the airplane would be tumbling and it would require split second timing, but theroretically if you were to jump straight up five feet from impact you would survive. Basically you are weightless while falling, so if you could jump up even a fraction of an inch as impact occured your weight would be neutralized. Maybe what the Marine pilot did was unstrap himself from the seat, crouch in the ready position and jumped as high as he could right before the impact. To offer any other explination other than mine for this pilot's survival of a three mile fall is asking me to believe the totally absurd. I'm not an idiot, people.
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I think most people that die in those sort of crashes or in any case parachute drops is the sudden deceleration,which might about destroy everything inside your body. Those people that have survived high speed crashes and are ejected most likely didn't just decelerate as they hit terra firma they decelerated slowly enough to not cause them to have been killed. At least that's how I understand it.
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Well i know he lived and thx airwolf. I have e-mailed Gameshow network hopefully they will give me his name.
Airwolf e-mailed and told me this guy was on I've got a secret. They want me to buy tape of show but all i want is his name lol
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I also really want to know how he did it.
I slept through a lot of physics class, so my comments are based mostly on observation. One of the most important factors in determining the survivablity of an ejection is the presence of sink rate when the handles are pulled. Past a given amount of downward vector of the aircraft you're leaving, those rocket motors aren't of any use except to delay your impact with the earth/fireball a few more nanoseconds. I've pulled the handles in the sim a few times and was shown the computer's estimation as to me and my crewmate's fates. Depending on the situation, it doesn't take a screaming dive to seal the deal, and the point they were making is to not delay the decision to get out and to trade airspeed for altitude by zooming the aircraft as much as possible before getting out. Zooming not only slows you down in the forward direction, making for less wind blast and flailing injuries, but it negates or reverses your downward vector as much as possible. The way I picture it is, yes I'm leaving the aircraft at a high rate of speed in all cases of ejection, but how fast is the earth "rising" to meet me at the same time? My comments are based on the Aces II seat carried in F-15's, F-16's and for now the F-22 till they get their new seat, but these principles are pretty universal. Seen and heard accounts of folks getting a good chute on ejection, only to disappear into the fireball moments later, usually in a landing scenario ejection where there is definately a downward vector present. We've all seen video of Russians getting out of their jets at various airshows with better results, fact is they have some pretty good seats, and they made the decision before the jet's downward vector was too much to overcome. Not to fault those who don't make it because of factors beyond their control. It's relatively easy to get out of the safe ejection envelope by excessive airspeed, low altitude, bad attitude or once again downward vector.
In the case of a streamer or otherwise bad chute, the going wisdom is not to panic - you've got the rest of your life to fix it :eek:. No kidding, one guy looked up and saw he had a bad chute, so he pulled the whole mess to him and released it back into the slipstream - no good. So he did it again - nothing. On the third attempt he got a good canopy. I've heard the story a number of times from different people, but no names, so not 100% sure it's true, but it makes a hell of a story.