Fall from aircraft without a parachute in WWII

[Dave Homewood]

There are several documented cases of airmen in WWII falling from a flying aeroplane without the aid of a parachute and miraculously surviving te fall.

The best known I think are Nicholas Alkemade
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade

And Alan Magee
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee


I seem to recall there was a Russian airman too who survived the same sort of fall too.


But I just discovered this article from the Evening Post dated 11 October 1943, with too ore examples:

FELL OUT OF BOMBER

U.S. SERGEANT'S ESCAPE

Rec. 10.30 a.m. LONDON, Oct. 10. The tail-gunner of a United States Flying Fortress, Staff-Sergeant James Jones, fell out of a Fortress over Britain without the benefit of his parachute and escaped almost uninjured. The Fortress returning in darkness from a late afternoon raid became temporarily lost and struck and ricocheted off a hill. The impact threw Sergeant Jones through the escape door. The crew estimate the height of the plane at between 25 and 100 feet. Jones instinctively pulled the ripcord of the parachute as he fell out, but the parachute did not have time to open. Jones fell on soft ground, and was knocked unconscious. He suffered a slightly sprained leg and minor cuts and bruises. It is estimated that he rolled 100 yards after hitting the ground, with the parachute winding about his body as he rolled.

Several months ago an Englishman, Flight Engineer Brian Taffe, fell about 1500 feet-from a Stirling bomber when his parachute failed to open. When found, he was buried three feet deep in soft soil. He suffered a fractured skull, a broken leg and shoulder, fractured ribs, and back injuries. Later he developed pneumonia, but today he is convalescing, and he hopes to be back on operational flights in a few weeks.

[ZacYates]

Dec 25, 2019 22:55:27 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

I seem to recall there was a Russian airman too who survived the same sort of fall too.

Ivan Chisov is in the See Also section of Alkemade’s page: 23,000ft. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Chisov

And while not WW2, the Serbian flight attendant whose plane was blown up is a truly remarkable story - an unaided fall of more than 33,000ft! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87

[Dave Homewood]

Thanks Zac.

[FlyingKiwi]

I've got a couple of old books about improbable aviation survival stories, and I remember reading in one about an airman, I think in Canada, who fell from a B-25 or something similar at low level and survived because he landed on a frozen lake and slid across the surface!