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Related: A Serbian flight attendant who survived a fall of 10,160 metres without a parachute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87
I wonder if this thought ever occurred to the pilot.
A fantastic read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee Alan Magee survived a 22,000-foot (6,700 m) fall from his damaged B-17 Flying Fortress. He was a ball turret machine gunner. Hit glass ceiling of a railway station which supposedly broke the fall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade Nicholas Alkemade survived, without a parachute, a fall of 18,000 feet (5,500 m). He was serving as a rear gunner in a Royal Air Force Avro Lancaster. His fall was broken by pine trees and a soft snow cover on the ground.
About non-functioning parachutes. I was reading "Flying Low" by B.K. Bryans who became a US Navy Jet pilot around mid 1960's. When he was going through his training in propeller driven training planes, a fellow student pilot bailed out of a trainer but fell to his death when the parachute didn't open. The trainer plane had no ejection seat so the student pilot had bailed out the old fashioned way, which required pulling a cord of the parachute manually after exiting the plane. His parachute tragically didn't open.
The base commander dropped 10 randomly selected parachutes from the base and NONE opened. A rigger from another airbase nearby was brought in and all the parachutes were all repacked.
That there was a mechanical failure, + 2 failures on the ejection, and a parachute failure - is not a fluke. This is an extreme dereliction of duty by design and/or maintenance teams. There would be blame to go around as a result of this, and surely some op changes.
> That there was a mechanical failure, + 2 failures on the ejection, and a parachute failure - is not a fluke. This is an extreme dereliction of duty by design and/or maintenance teams. Re: Ejector seat, it could also have been pilot error, if he had forgotten to take the safety pins out of the ejector system during his pre flight check. They are there specifically to prevent the ejection rocket from firing while mai…
While not nearly as dramatic, this story reminds me a serious accident I had in my early childhood. For a long time I thought that perhaps I did die and that I had continued life in a near identical parallel dimension while leaving friends and relatives mourning in the one I had been born in. I wonder if this thought ever occurred to the pilot. A fantastic read.
He fell in an ocean. I wonder, if you happen by some extraordinary feat of skill or luck to fall feet-down in a perfectly straight body formation, would the impact be too small to have any injury?
Judging by his injuries (smashed ankles and broken hip), I guess that is exactly how he fell.
The Free Fall Research Page: Unplanned Freefall? Some Survival Tips by David Carkeet
http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/carkeet.html
Reading these articles is very personal to me, because I crashed my parapente on takeoff on what would have been my second solo flight. I still want to take up training again, but I need a new coach who I trust to tell me when the wind's strong enough.
Three different wingsuit pilots have survived unintentionally crashing into trees with no parachute out now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp3YLdhraPw
https://vimeo.com/50817449 (view at 6:35)
http://www.basejumper.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2994...
And then you have Jeb Corliss crashing full speed into a mountain and surviving:
He fell in an ocean. I wonder, if you happen by some extraordinary feat of skill or luck to fall feet-down in a perfectly straight body formation, would the impact be too small to have any injury?
It sounds like his pilot chute and un-deployed main chute slowed him down just enough, and he landed well enough, that his body was able to take it. Lack of spleen helps too.