[SamAdams76]

OK, but four stories is what, maybe 40-50 feet at most? We are talking 22,000 feet here. That's over four miles of falling. I just don't buy it.

[Travis McGee]

Terminal velocity is the same whether you fall from 2,000 feet or 22,000. People have jumped from skyscrapers and landed on car roofs and lived. You just need that little cushion, whether it's a snow bank, hay stack, auto roof, awning, cactus plant or a skylight.

[spodefly]

Terminal velocity for a falling human body is around 120 MPH, faster if you are falling head first perpendicular to the ground. Since he was passed out, he probably curled into a ball back first for the fall. It pretty much doesn't matter once you get above about 300 feet, you will be at terminal velocity when you hit the ground.

Strange things do happen. I wouldn't want to make that trip though.

[okie01]

There was another WWII story about a crewman who fell out the bomb bay of a B-24 returning from a nighttime bombing raid on Attu in the Aleutians.

He had gone back to the bay in an attempt to remove a bomb that had hung up. But, in trying to disengage it, he fell out of the open bay. They were flying at about 8,000 feet, as I recall.

He dropped about fifty feet -- into a snow bank on a mountainside.

Got up. Dusted himself off. And, once the sun came up, walked down the mountain.

[U S Army EOD]

I know of four cases like this counting this one. The other was a British guy and there were two different Navy pilots that ejected over water in the 60's both of them had ruptured spleens. One had a cigarette roll in his chute that slowed him some the other a total malfunction.