I.M. Chisov Lt. I.M. Chisov was a Russian airman whose Ilyushin IL-4 bomber was attacked by German fighters in January of 1942. Falling nearly 22,000 feet, he hit the edge of a snow-covered ravine and rolled to the bottom. He was badly hurt but survived.
Alan Magee Alan Magee, a gunner on a B-17 with the 303rd Bomb Group of the U.S. 8th Air Force, was on a mission to St. Nazaire, France in January of 1943, when his bomber was set aflame by enemy fire. He was thrown from the plane before he had a chance to put on his parachute. He fell 20,000 feet and crashed through the skylight of the St. Nazaire train station. His arm was badly injured, but he recovered from that and other injuries.
Nicholas Alkemade 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.
record holder
Vesna Vulovic
Vesna Vulovic was a stewardess on a Yugoslav DC 9 jet airliner that blew up in January of 1972 (probably as the result of a terrorist bomb). She fell more than 33,000 feet in the wreckage of the plane, which hit a snow-covered slope. The only survivor, she was badly injured and was paralyzed from the waist down, but later recovered and now can walk.
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Indiantown Gap Incident
This account was provided by Bill Tuttle, but he doesn't know the name of the jumper, do you?:
"In 1967, I was at Indiantown Gap for ROTC summer training. At around 10:00 am on the 4th of July, about 500 of us were all standing in formation on the southwest side of Muir Army Airfield for a paradrop demo by part of a company of the 82nd Airborne (that was their reward for acting as instructors and aggressors during our six-week training period). The Golden Knights may have been part of the stick, but if they were, they were using T-10s--nothing fancy. The main drop zone was the runway, which was sod until they got the cash to pave it sometime in the early '70s.
"They all bailed from the C-130 at about 1,500 feet or so. About halfway through the drop, one guy came zipping down past the other jumpers--he had a streamer, and we started wondering when he'd pop his reserve; he got it out at about 500 feet. Problem was, he didn't get rid of his main in time, so it wrapped around the reserve and he got a 'Mae West' when the reserve opened. By now, he was about 200 feet above ground level, but all that nylon slowed him down to just below terminal velocity. He was still thrashing around trying to untangle the mess when he hit the middle of the slope area with a THUD and a big, thick cloud of dust about fifty yards in front of us.
"I remember thinking, 'Well, I just saw somebody die right in front of me...do I puke now or wait a couple of minutes?' and about three seconds later, there was this loud scream of 'AIR-BORNE!' from the dust cloud--up he popped and limped/hopped up-slope toward the main drop zone.
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