The luckiest man alive?

[ozzy72]

I wasn't familiar with this story, but it is interesting reading (and makes you realise how little health & safety there was in WWI)...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-29703198

[Hagar]

Health & Safety & war seems to be an oxymoron.

The article is badly written with several contradictory statements but the story could be true. I'm not sure how he knew how far he fell.

[OldAirmail]

That story brings two things to mind.

One - The Floating Dog

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIHCim96qA8[/youtube]




And the other was about firing those machine guns.





Synchronization was, of course, a concern.





But it didn't always work out in "real world" practice.





One solution was to put metal wedges on the propeller where the bullets might hit.

Unfortunately, after a number of hits, the wedges would come loose.

[Hagar]

I've read many similar accounts of miraculous escapes by airmen after falling from their machines during WWI. Here's a couple I found on Google.


Air Marshal Sir Grahame Donald KCB DFC AFC

Donald, shown in the picture above, swore by the story until his death. From his book:

As I was approaching the airfield at 6000 feet, I decided to try a new maneuver which might prove useful in combat. It was to be a half loop and then I would roll at the top and fly off in the opposite direction. I pulled her up into a neat half loop but I was going rather slowly and hanging upside down in the air. With an efficient safety belt that would have been no trouble at all. But our standard belts were a 100% unsafe. Mine stretched a little and suddenly I dived clean through it and fell out of the cockpit. There was nothing between me and the ground. The first 2000 feet passed very quickly and terra firma looked damnably firmer.

As I fell, I began to hear my faithful little Camel somewhere nearby. Suddenly, I fell back onto her. I was able to grip onto her top plane and that saved me from slithering straight through the propeller, which was glistening beautifully in the evening sunshine. She was now diving noisily at about 140 miles per hour. I was hanging onto her with my left hand, and with one foot hooked into the cockpit, I managed to reach down with my other hand and I pulled her control stick backwards to pull her gently out of her dive. This was a mistake. She immediately went into the most appalling inverted spin. Even with two hands on the top plane I was slipping. I had about two and half thousand feet left. Remembering that everything was inverted, I managed to get my right foot on the control stick and managed to push it forwards. The Camel stopped spinning in half a turn and went into a smooth glide, but upside down. It was now easy to reach my hand down, or up, and pull her gently down and round into a normal glide. I grabbed the seat cushion which was obstructing the cockpit, chucked it over the side, and sat back down.

I was now at about 800 feet, but in spite of the extraordinary battering she had received, my little Camel was flying perfectly. One or two of the wings were a bit loose, but nothing was broken. I turned the engine off in case of strain, so my approach was made in silence. I made an unusually good landing, but there was noone there to applaud. Every man and jack of the squadron had mysteriously disappeared. After about a minute or so, heads began popping up like bunny rabbits from every hole. Apparently as I had pressed my foot on the control stick, I had also pressed both triggers, and the entire airfield had been sprinkled with bullets. Very wisely, the ground crew dived as one man for the nearest ditch.

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Wing Cdr. Louis Arbon Strange DSO OBE MC DFC*

While with No 6 squadron, Strange was a compatriot of Captain Lanoe Hawker. The Squadron became pioneers of many aspects in military aviation at the time, driven largely by the imagination of Strange and the engineering talents of Hawker. Their talents led to various mountings for Lewis machine guns, one of which won Hawker the Victoria Cross, and one that nearly cost Strange his life.

Having equipped his Martinsyde S1 scout with a Lewis gun mounted on the top wing above the cockpit, on 10 May 1915 Strange sought out the enemy to try out the new arrangement and attacked a German Aviatik two-seater. In order to change the empty drum on the Lewis, Strange had to stand up in the cockpit. Immediately the machine flipped on its back, throwing Strange from the cockpit and developing a flat spin downwards. Strange, hanging onto the ammo drum of the Lewis gun, managed to swing back into the cockpit and kick the stick over to right the aircraft 500 feet above the ground.

Strange later related ; I kept on kicking upwards behind me until at last I got one foot and then the other hooked inside the cockpit. Somehow I got the stick between my legs again, and jammed on full aileron and elevator; I do not know exactly what happened then, but the trick was done. The machine came over the right way up, and I fell off the top plane and into my seat with a bump.

He safely returned to base. He was criticised by his CO for 'causing unnecessary damage' to his instrument panel and seat in his efforts to regain the cockpit!

[logjam]

I guess these were the original Mess bar stories. "There I was at 20,000 feet above the trenches with bullets flying all around me, when the top wing fell off!"

[Fozzer]

Maybe I'm just the only sceptical Chap in the World?.... ... ...!

Paul.... ...!

[OldAirmail]

I guess these were the original Mess bar stories. "There I was at 20,000 feet above the trenches with bullets flying all around me, when the top wing fell off!"

I prefer the other version: There I was at 20,000 thousand feet with nothing between me and the earth but a thin blonde woman.