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To: woofie
What is the Highest Jump WITHOUT a Parachute?

1. "Lieutenant I. M. Chisov of the former Soviet Union was flying his Ilyushin 4 on a bitter cold day in January 1942, when it was attacked by 12 German Messerschmitts. Convinced that he had no chance of surviving if he staged with his badly battered plane, Chisov bailed out at 21,980 feet. With the fighters still buzzing around, Chisov cleverly decided to fall freely out of the arena. It was his plan not to open his chute until he was down to only 1000 ft above the ground. Unfortunately, he lost consciousness en route. As luck would have it, he crashed at the edge of a steep ravine covered with 3 ft of snow. Hitting at about 120 mi/h, he plowed along its slope until he came to rest at the bottom. Chisov awoke 20 min later, bruised and sore, but miraclously he had suffered only a concussion of the spine and a fractured pelvis. Three and one-half months later he was back at work as a flight instructor." Hecht, Eugene. Physics: Calculus. 2nd ed. United States: Brooks/Cole, 2000. p 85

2. Flight Sergeant Nicholas Steven Alkemade was on a bombing mission over Germany on 23 March 1944 when his Lancaster bomber flying at 18,000 feet was blazed apart and in flames when he was forced to jump, without a parachute or be burn to death. He dove out of his destroyed aircraft hoping on a quick death. His speed accelerated to over 120 miles per hour and he impacted on a snow covered sloping forest. He was completely uninjured and later captured by the Germans who refused to believe his story.

26 posted on 02/03/2004 9:50:46 PM PST by jordan8
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To: jordan8
I recall reading about the British airman who jumped from the tail of a Lancaster when I was about ten years old. The turret would not move so he had to turn it by hand and by the time he had done so his parachute was on fire. Rather than burn, he manually turned the turret again and jumped, landing on the snow covered slope with the trees which cushioned his fall. The Germans did not believe his story and battered him with their gun butts and dragged him off. Later, after they discovered the remains of his aircraft they apologised and treated him like a hero!
104 posted on 12/22/2010 4:07:13 PM PST by KeefyH44
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