I was once in a plane crash in which the wing of our small plane hit the mast of a sailboat that was motoring in front of the runway and we didnt see it. We impacted the seawall and flipped over onto land and slid upside down a few hundred feet.
The author's description of both not feeling his injuries until he tried to move as well as his own recognition of not being dead were spot on. I would have described it exactly the same way myself. I ended up with a broken foot and leg, but overall no lasting damage which was extremely lucky. Looking back on that experience is always incredibly surreal.
It is amazing how little you feel immediately after an accident. Mine wasn't so death-defying, but I did shatter my shoulder in a bicycle accident, and called a friend to come get me and drive me and my bike home. I did not realize I was hurt until he got there, and could not stand up or move the left half of my body. Then we decided to go to the hospital instead of my home. But for about the first 10 minutes, I thought I just was just scraped up a bit...
Can anyone explain the quote below? I don't really understand how the minesweeper understood the signal.
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The Coast Guard amphibian gained altitude and flew off. (I learned later that he headed for a squadron of minesweepers that was returning to the United States from a tour of the Western Pacific. He was unable to tune to their radio frequency for communications. But this ingenious pilot lowered a wire from his aircraft and dragged it across the bow of the minesweeper, the USS Embattle. The minesweeper captain understood the plea, and veered off at top speed in my direction.)
OK, you're a captain of a boat. A friendly plane is circling above your boat. What's up with him? Radio him. Nope, that didn't work. He dragged a rope across our deck and flew off in a straight line. Let's follow him and find out what the fuss is all about.
It's an unusual method. There is now a standard method for this, which is printed on the SOLAS (Safety Of Lifes At Sea) cards we sailors are required to carry, although the direction ones are not on all versions of the card I've seen. Here's one that has them (section "Air to Surface Direction Signals): http://www.marinelite.gr/images/detailed/1/221518a.jpg
I think it was mostly a matter of people asking "what is that Coast Guard amphibian rescue plane trying so hard to tell us?" and that question having a very short list of likely answers.
I interpreted it that the plane dragged the wire in the sea in front of the minesweeper in the heading of the pilot. This would have drawn a line in the sea, as it were.
That would be a totally unexpected behavior, which would give the minesweeper's captain the clue that it was a signal to change course to the given heading. The plane would have headed back to the pilot and circled, giving the minesweeper's captain assurance he had understood the signal.
I'm not a pilot, but I've often read in rescue histories that an airplane's circling and then flying-over in a given direction is meant to be taken as a vector, like "go that way".
In this case I'm guessing the wire was more like the second, confirming clue.
They were dragging it perpendicular across the front of the ship, so, the wire is like a hand waving "this way, follow the line", which was pointed towards the location of the guy.
It is not a standard or anything, so abnormal enough to get the drift.
The minesweeper probably had already been informed over the radio by the rest of 7th Fleet that a plane had gone down, so it didn't take a whole lot to put "aircraft which can't communicate is signaling" followed by the heading.
if your experience (memory of error-correcting inter-ship communication procedures) is perplexed/high entropy, something unexplainable/miraculous/it is like a flare
One important note is that this was NOT free fall as you'd expect. The pilot chute is still pretty large and provides a LOT of drag. Instead of 120mph, you'd be falling near ~90mph with just it behind you. That is 44% less kinetic energy!
He mentioned not preparing for the impact. How would one even prepare for an impact if one wanted to? Ground or water, I just can't think of a good way to land. Anyone have any insight?
44% is a big difference. Given the damage his body sustained, I think he would have certainly died if the kinetic energy hadn't been reduced by that magnitude. Every other story I've heard of someone surviving a fall from these kinds of heights involved a parachute not opening but remaining attached.
At least 5 redundancies failed: the Ram Air turbine, primary and secondary ejection sequences, the parachute, and his survival pack went missing. And yet Mr. Judkins survived maybe because he had spleen removed. Amazing.
Actually the RAT worked (the emergency electrical generator).
My team is working on building one of these auxiliary generators right now, fun project.
Earlier this year I deployed a RAT by mistake (poor mechanical design) and I believe it died as we were flying too fast for it (poor electrical design)
Two other incredible stories of men who jumped without a parachute from burning/crashing planes from tens of thousands of feet up in the sky and survived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee
Alan Magee survived a 22,000-foot (6,700 m) fall from his damaged B-17 Flying Fortress. He was a ball turret machine gunner. Hit glass ceiling of a railway station which supposedly broke the fall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade
Nicholas Alkemade survived, without a parachute, a fall of 18,000 feet (5,500 m). He was serving as a rear gunner in a Royal Air Force Avro Lancaster. His fall was broken by pine trees and a soft snow cover on the ground.
About non-functioning parachutes.
I was reading "Flying Low" by B.K. Bryans who became a US Navy Jet pilot around mid 1960's. When he was going through his training in propeller driven training planes, a fellow student pilot bailed out of a trainer but fell to his death when the parachute didn't open. The trainer plane had no ejection seat so the student pilot had bailed out the old fashioned way, which required pulling a cord of the parachute manually after exiting the plane. His parachute tragically didn't open.
The base commander dropped 10 randomly selected parachutes from the base and NONE opened. A rigger from another airbase nearby was brought in and all the parachutes were all repacked.
Earlier this year on a white water rafting expedition I had the misfortune of falling out of the raft and into a series of category 5 rapids. It was absolute chaos. The force of large bodies of moving water is astounding. Any notion of "swimming to safety" is ludicrous. A more accurate description is "being washed to safety" because you have no control over the larger movements of your body. I've heard in avalanches survivors sometimes don't know which end is up and digging themselves deeper. This was me while underwater in the rapids. I couldn't see, didn't know which end was up, and couldn't breath. How he managed to survive is astonishing. Finding his knife, assessing the situation, and acting before being pulled under while injured almost defies my imagination. Riveting read.
Never went into rapids, but I went into a beach between caribean sea and atlantic ocean, known for having a bit more waves (nothing like a class V rapid, maybe 1m waves max.). I failed to catch one at the right time and got swallowed into the crashing tube, it was hard to describe how being embedded in a fluid with enough internal energy feels.
Between the chaotic directions and the actual strength I turned into a wooden puppet. I ended up eating the sand face first while my heel knocked my head from behind. Something I cannot do on my own, its just the wave that folded me backward. I'm lucky I didn't breath water I'd have finished that day in a hospital or worse.
I can speak more towards avalanches than I can with rapids. It might be tangential to this discussion, but I can't help but chime in on the subject when I get the chance. I've thankfully never been buried in a slide, but it's one of those topics that all non-suicidal backcountry skiers spend a lot of time studying. The community is extremely focused on education and outreach, because those are the only tools that will give people the knowledge and skills needed for informed decision-making when they're in the backcountry. You do everything in your power to avoid being in a position to trigger a slide in the first place. Even if it means foregoing your planned lines for more conservative terrain, going home when you see the terrain and snowpack, or not going out at all if the forecasted danger level is high.
Self-rescue is really, really rare unless you've been incredibly lucky enough to float towards the top of a shallow deposition zone in a small slide. Or you've been deposited on top. Even in a relatively shallow burial, 10-12" inches (or even less) means you're entombed in what might as well be concrete. If you're lucky, you'll be able to at least push away a cavity to breathe into while you wait for the rest of your group to dig you out before you asphyxiate. There's equipment that can help you improve your chances (airbag, AvaLung) beyond just the beacon, but they're not guarantees. If it's in your mouth and it isn't knocked out, an AvaLung might help you extend your air supply. An ABS airbag system will hopefully help you float closer to the top during the slide. It won't help you if you slam into a tree or other debris and break your back.
Whether it's in the snow, or in the water, mother nature is an uncaring mistress who demands respect. Even when you do everything right, she can still kill you. If there's one good thing about hearing these stories, terrifying and tragic as they often may be, it's that they can drive home that point. The outdoors are, more often than not, a continual exercise in risk management. We put up with it because there's nothing quite as breathtaking as seeing the sun peak over a snow-covered horizon from atop the mountain. Or as exhilarating as the ride down.
> The force of large bodies of moving water is astounding.
We underestimate it because we're used to water flowing around us at low speeds. But once you've got enough of it moving quickly, the viscosity and momentum really starts to matter.
The thing I think of to try to ground my intuition is to imagine someone throwing a gallon of water at me, still in its jug. Now imagine thousands of those hurtling my way. That's a big crashing wave.
Why did "He was unable to tune to their radio frequency for communications. But this ingenious pilot lowered a wire from his aircraft and dragged it across the bow of the minesweeper, the USS Embattle. The minesweeper captain understood the plea, and veered off at top speed in my direction.)" work?
Did they just figure out something was wrong or is dragging a wire a common naval code?
I had a friend in high school who's father survived a skydiving accident "breaking every bone in his body." What made the biggest impression on me was that not only did he have to recover physically, but he had to deal with inability to work and medical bills leading to bankruptcy and a failed business. It may have been the first time in my life I thought about this kind of consequences.
I did a tandem jump from 10,000 ft when I was a teenager. We exited the plane while flying through clouds (which is illegal IIRC) and tumbled out of control for the entire free fall period before the chute opened.
The exit was my fault. To initiate a jump, the pilot would count down from three and then scream "GO". With the door open it was very difficult to hear. Clouds were forming and we had already aborted twice, with my partner pulling us back into the plane each time.
On the third attempt I misread the shouts and hand signals and exited the plane before "GO". I was taller and heavier than my tandem partner so he probably had no choice.
We tumbled into thick, gray clouds. Without a horizon this made me nauseous. My partner was screaming from the moment we left the plane. I'd catch a word or two but most of his instruction was lost to the wind. We were totally out of control.
We exited the cloud still tumbling, my partner still screaming. I remember the chute opening, but we were never properly in control.
The next few minutes were glorious, though still nauseous, and the landing was uneventful.
I didn't think much of the consequences back then... But no more skydiving for me :-)
Reading these articles is very personal to me, because I crashed my parapente on takeoff on what would have been my second solo flight. I still want to take up training again, but I need a new coach who I trust to tell me when the wind's strong enough.
While not nearly as dramatic, this story reminds me a serious accident I had in my early childhood. For a long time I thought that perhaps I did die and that I had continued life in a near identical parallel dimension while leaving friends and relatives mourning in the one I had been born in.
I wonder if this thought ever occurred to the pilot.
That sounds extremely confident. I can google that it's a common area of internal bleeding but what is the exact likelihood in that particular instance?
I believe that's a core part of the training for Navy SEALS.
They push you far past your "breaking point" to realize that it isn't where you thought it was, helping you learn to keep your head about you when in extreme situations.
[+] [-] Mitchhhs|8 years ago|reply
The author's description of both not feeling his injuries until he tried to move as well as his own recognition of not being dead were spot on. I would have described it exactly the same way myself. I ended up with a broken foot and leg, but overall no lasting damage which was extremely lucky. Looking back on that experience is always incredibly surreal.
[+] [-] codingdave|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cryptid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clamprecht|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] econnors|8 years ago|reply
Can anyone explain the quote below? I don't really understand how the minesweeper understood the signal.
---
The Coast Guard amphibian gained altitude and flew off. (I learned later that he headed for a squadron of minesweepers that was returning to the United States from a tour of the Western Pacific. He was unable to tune to their radio frequency for communications. But this ingenious pilot lowered a wire from his aircraft and dragged it across the bow of the minesweeper, the USS Embattle. The minesweeper captain understood the plea, and veered off at top speed in my direction.)
[+] [-] rangibaby|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdfjkl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justin66|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gvb|8 years ago|reply
That would be a totally unexpected behavior, which would give the minesweeper's captain the clue that it was a signal to change course to the given heading. The plane would have headed back to the pilot and circled, giving the minesweeper's captain assurance he had understood the signal.
[+] [-] themodelplumber|8 years ago|reply
In this case I'm guessing the wire was more like the second, confirming clue.
[+] [-] Cacti|8 years ago|reply
It is not a standard or anything, so abnormal enough to get the drift.
[+] [-] rdl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EADGBE|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] an_account|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graeme|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pizza|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] js2|8 years ago|reply
https://www.damninteresting.com/rider-on-the-storm/
[+] [-] adamredwoods|8 years ago|reply
and this one of a paraglider surviving a thunderstorm uplift: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/dead-luck-ewas-flight-of...
[+] [-] dmitrygr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] varjag|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rconti|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CryptoPunk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tempestn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] et-al|8 years ago|reply
At least 5 redundancies failed: the Ram Air turbine, primary and secondary ejection sequences, the parachute, and his survival pack went missing. And yet Mr. Judkins survived maybe because he had spleen removed. Amazing.
[+] [-] qume|8 years ago|reply
My team is working on building one of these auxiliary generators right now, fun project.
Earlier this year I deployed a RAT by mistake (poor mechanical design) and I believe it died as we were flying too fast for it (poor electrical design)
[+] [-] mavidser|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johngalt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DonHopkins|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dba7dba|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee Alan Magee survived a 22,000-foot (6,700 m) fall from his damaged B-17 Flying Fortress. He was a ball turret machine gunner. Hit glass ceiling of a railway station which supposedly broke the fall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade Nicholas Alkemade survived, without a parachute, a fall of 18,000 feet (5,500 m). He was serving as a rear gunner in a Royal Air Force Avro Lancaster. His fall was broken by pine trees and a soft snow cover on the ground.
About non-functioning parachutes. I was reading "Flying Low" by B.K. Bryans who became a US Navy Jet pilot around mid 1960's. When he was going through his training in propeller driven training planes, a fellow student pilot bailed out of a trainer but fell to his death when the parachute didn't open. The trainer plane had no ejection seat so the student pilot had bailed out the old fashioned way, which required pulling a cord of the parachute manually after exiting the plane. His parachute tragically didn't open.
The base commander dropped 10 randomly selected parachutes from the base and NONE opened. A rigger from another airbase nearby was brought in and all the parachutes were all repacked.
[+] [-] iopuy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bluestrike2|8 years ago|reply
Self-rescue is really, really rare unless you've been incredibly lucky enough to float towards the top of a shallow deposition zone in a small slide. Or you've been deposited on top. Even in a relatively shallow burial, 10-12" inches (or even less) means you're entombed in what might as well be concrete. If you're lucky, you'll be able to at least push away a cavity to breathe into while you wait for the rest of your group to dig you out before you asphyxiate. There's equipment that can help you improve your chances (airbag, AvaLung) beyond just the beacon, but they're not guarantees. If it's in your mouth and it isn't knocked out, an AvaLung might help you extend your air supply. An ABS airbag system will hopefully help you float closer to the top during the slide. It won't help you if you slam into a tree or other debris and break your back.
Whether it's in the snow, or in the water, mother nature is an uncaring mistress who demands respect. Even when you do everything right, she can still kill you. If there's one good thing about hearing these stories, terrifying and tragic as they often may be, it's that they can drive home that point. The outdoors are, more often than not, a continual exercise in risk management. We put up with it because there's nothing quite as breathtaking as seeing the sun peak over a snow-covered horizon from atop the mountain. Or as exhilarating as the ride down.
[+] [-] munificent|8 years ago|reply
We underestimate it because we're used to water flowing around us at low speeds. But once you've got enough of it moving quickly, the viscosity and momentum really starts to matter.
The thing I think of to try to ground my intuition is to imagine someone throwing a gallon of water at me, still in its jug. Now imagine thousands of those hurtling my way. That's a big crashing wave.
[+] [-] hellbanner|8 years ago|reply
Did they just figure out something was wrong or is dragging a wire a common naval code?
[+] [-] wolfkill|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] delvinj|8 years ago|reply
The exit was my fault. To initiate a jump, the pilot would count down from three and then scream "GO". With the door open it was very difficult to hear. Clouds were forming and we had already aborted twice, with my partner pulling us back into the plane each time.
On the third attempt I misread the shouts and hand signals and exited the plane before "GO". I was taller and heavier than my tandem partner so he probably had no choice.
We tumbled into thick, gray clouds. Without a horizon this made me nauseous. My partner was screaming from the moment we left the plane. I'd catch a word or two but most of his instruction was lost to the wind. We were totally out of control.
We exited the cloud still tumbling, my partner still screaming. I remember the chute opening, but we were never properly in control.
The next few minutes were glorious, though still nauseous, and the landing was uneventful.
I didn't think much of the consequences back then... But no more skydiving for me :-)
[+] [-] peterburkimsher|8 years ago|reply
The Free Fall Research Page: Unplanned Freefall? Some Survival Tips by David Carkeet
http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/carkeet.html
Reading these articles is very personal to me, because I crashed my parapente on takeoff on what would have been my second solo flight. I still want to take up training again, but I need a new coach who I trust to tell me when the wind's strong enough.
[+] [-] unicornporn|8 years ago|reply
I wonder if this thought ever occurred to the pilot.
A fantastic read.
[+] [-] brendanw|8 years ago|reply
Three different wingsuit pilots have survived unintentionally crashing into trees with no parachute out now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp3YLdhraPw
https://vimeo.com/50817449 (view at 6:35)
http://www.basejumper.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2994...
And then you have Jeb Corliss crashing full speed into a mountain and surviving:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92-fNtnewxc
[+] [-] Insanity|8 years ago|reply
Asked because of reading this article.
[+] [-] jpatokal|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87
[+] [-] psergeant|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epigramx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gear54rus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrismealy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raldi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baby|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] module0000|8 years ago|reply
```“This is very serious,” I thought.```
This is balls of brass and nerves of steel combined.
[+] [-] hutzlibu|8 years ago|reply
But if you stay calm, despite thinking it is hopeless and take your small chances, once they arise - you might actually succed and survive ..
[+] [-] lilbobbytables|8 years ago|reply
I believe that's a core part of the training for Navy SEALS.
They push you far past your "breaking point" to realize that it isn't where you thought it was, helping you learn to keep your head about you when in extreme situations.