Russian Paratroops

[Reb]

I read years ago of a post war American flyer who went down fifty thousand feet sans parachute into the ocean. Lost his spleen but survived.

I'd have to meet the guy to believe it but who can doubt Reader's Digest?

As to Russian Paras - The Russian high command weren't stupid - they just went through a period where they were rich in men and poor in equipment.

cheers
Reb

[DXTR]

P.S. the RAF chap in question mentioned above was Flt. Sgt. Alkmeade, who had to bail out of his aircraft three miles up....sans parachute because as tail-gunner there was no room for his chute in the turret, he would have had to get back into the fuselage and attach it to his harness...except the plane was on fire. So he jumped.

He passed out on the way down and missed the fun, but - he hit the top of a pine tree and his velocity was braked by falling the branches before being thrown off into a 15ft. snow drift. He survived the fall with just a broken arm.

My aunt was working in the ER of the local hospital where I worked as an orderly in the early years of university. One night a german guy was brought in. He was rather unscathed but it turned out that he had fallen from a 14 story building. He and a friend of his were smoking pot on the roof enjoying the view. While walking on the edge a gust of wind took him off the roof and he fell to might have been his death had he not been so damn lucky.
While falling he first hid some powerlines that broke, but cushened his fall, then he hid an old lamppost and that broke too. Then he fell down through a tree the branches broke, and cushened his fall even further, until he finally came to rest in some soft soil.

A resident on the tenth floor was cooking in his kitchen when he saw someone or something rush by the window. Fearing the worst he looked through the window and saw a guy get up and walk after the fall.
Now thats luck....

[phylo_roadking]

I once watched an incredibly drunk student friend fall over the bannister on the fourth floor of a four storey stairwell, and plummet onto a hard marble floor. He got up and walked away with absolutely NO ill-effects...except being even more pissed in the temper sense because we insisted on taking him to hospital and loosing more good drinking time!

I've always heard it said that people who have reached just the right state of intoxication in any form can "bounce", their bodies can become SO lax and muscle-less that they "flop" on contact with a hard surface!!! I suppose you can't break a bag of loose bones LOL

[Volgadon]

Snow drifts can get quite deep in Russia, even in the south. I've seen them. Parachuting would be hazardous in heavily wooded areas like Belorus, snow or no snow, but in the treeless steppes of the south, from a low-flying slow aircraft, why not?

[phylo_roadking]

...just as long as you don't happen to find the five-metre telephone pole in the six-metre snowdrift...

[Volgadon]

That's always the risk.....

[Carl Schwamberger]

Back in the 1980s there was a technique for dropping a stick or group of parachutists from a airplane, with no forward motion. I witnessesed it twice for dropping small recon teams. The technique was for the plane to slow to near stalling speed, then abruptly go to full power and simultaneously point the nose vertical. The parachutists dropped out the rear ramp/hatch with near zero horizontal motion. The result was a very tight landing pattern. In the first case the aircrafts inital altitude seems very low, under 500 feet or 150 meters. The parachutes were opened somewhere between 500 & 800 feet. In the second example they must have been over 1000 feet or 300 meters.