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Jun. 13th, 2007 09:57 amOn January 26th, 1972, Vesna Vulovic set a world record of the sort you expect she wishes she hadn't. She set a record for suviving the longest fall without a parachute.
When an explosion tore JAT Yugoslav Flight 364 to bits, everybody aboard the aircraft was killed except her. She fell 33,000 feet (6.31 miles), breaking almost every bone in her body and being temporarily paralysed from the waist down . However, she made a full recovery and became a Yugoslav national hero - presumably on the basis that if someone is that lucky then it's probably in your interest to make nice to them.
Perhaps more impressive is the story of Flight Sergeant Nick Alkemade, a tail gunner aboard a Lancaster bomber during the second world war. During an attack on Berlin his plane was repeatedly hit and started to go down. Nick's parachute was in the main plane and damage to the aircraft made it inaccessable and so rather than sit in a burning bomber as it plunged to earth, Nick decided he'd 'rather die quickly' and jumped out.
He fell 18,045 feet (about 3.5 miles) before landing on a snowy hillside covered in pine trees, the combination of which broke his fall and left him with no worse injury than a twisted ankle. Legend has it he sat and smoked whilst waiting for the Gestapo to show up and arrest him.
I find stories like this reassuring, because when it comes to heights I'm an absolute coward. Whenever I fly there's always the niggling thought in the back of my head that something might go awfully wrong and I could spend my last few minutes listening to the wind whistling past my ears and contemplating the rapidly approaching earth. The thought that there's a remote but finite chance of survival is oddly comforting. That said, it's quite likely that during the fall there'd be a sound like a kazoo as I crapped myself to death and I wouldn't live to impact, but that's a faint hope.
This is why I've never understood adrenaline junkies going bungee jumping, base jumping, skydiving or whatever. The fourth rung of a ladder makes my knees go a bit wobbly so the thought of hopping off a bridge or out of an aeroplane just makes me recoil in sphincter-clenching fear.
In terms of sheer pants wetting terror, though, it doens't get better than USAF Colonel Joe Kittinger. In 1959, he was part of Project Exelsior, a pre-Apollo Programme project to find out if astronauts stood any chance of surviving if something went wrong on launch and they had to bail out at high altitude. The only way to find out was for someone to do just that, and jump from high altitude.
On August 16th, 1960, Kittinger voluntarily jumped from a Helium balloon at 102,000 feet (about 20 miles). During his fall he was clocked by radar travelling at 714 mph (and in so doing became the only person ever to break the sound barrier unassisted). He set records for highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, longest freefall and fastest speed by a man through the atmosphere which remain unbroken. There is no record of whether he screamed like a little girl all the way down, but I doubt he did. I know I would have.
The best bit of all of this is that he filmed his descent. So if you've ever wondered what it would be like to fall from outer space, I think it'd look something like this.
When an explosion tore JAT Yugoslav Flight 364 to bits, everybody aboard the aircraft was killed except her. She fell 33,000 feet (6.31 miles), breaking almost every bone in her body and being temporarily paralysed from the waist down . However, she made a full recovery and became a Yugoslav national hero - presumably on the basis that if someone is that lucky then it's probably in your interest to make nice to them.
Perhaps more impressive is the story of Flight Sergeant Nick Alkemade, a tail gunner aboard a Lancaster bomber during the second world war. During an attack on Berlin his plane was repeatedly hit and started to go down. Nick's parachute was in the main plane and damage to the aircraft made it inaccessable and so rather than sit in a burning bomber as it plunged to earth, Nick decided he'd 'rather die quickly' and jumped out.
He fell 18,045 feet (about 3.5 miles) before landing on a snowy hillside covered in pine trees, the combination of which broke his fall and left him with no worse injury than a twisted ankle. Legend has it he sat and smoked whilst waiting for the Gestapo to show up and arrest him.
I find stories like this reassuring, because when it comes to heights I'm an absolute coward. Whenever I fly there's always the niggling thought in the back of my head that something might go awfully wrong and I could spend my last few minutes listening to the wind whistling past my ears and contemplating the rapidly approaching earth. The thought that there's a remote but finite chance of survival is oddly comforting. That said, it's quite likely that during the fall there'd be a sound like a kazoo as I crapped myself to death and I wouldn't live to impact, but that's a faint hope.
This is why I've never understood adrenaline junkies going bungee jumping, base jumping, skydiving or whatever. The fourth rung of a ladder makes my knees go a bit wobbly so the thought of hopping off a bridge or out of an aeroplane just makes me recoil in sphincter-clenching fear.
In terms of sheer pants wetting terror, though, it doens't get better than USAF Colonel Joe Kittinger. In 1959, he was part of Project Exelsior, a pre-Apollo Programme project to find out if astronauts stood any chance of surviving if something went wrong on launch and they had to bail out at high altitude. The only way to find out was for someone to do just that, and jump from high altitude.
On August 16th, 1960, Kittinger voluntarily jumped from a Helium balloon at 102,000 feet (about 20 miles). During his fall he was clocked by radar travelling at 714 mph (and in so doing became the only person ever to break the sound barrier unassisted). He set records for highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, longest freefall and fastest speed by a man through the atmosphere which remain unbroken. There is no record of whether he screamed like a little girl all the way down, but I doubt he did. I know I would have.
The best bit of all of this is that he filmed his descent. So if you've ever wondered what it would be like to fall from outer space, I think it'd look something like this.
