OH, CHUTE

Of all the harsh environments you might find yourself trying to survive in, it’s hard to imagine anywhere you are more helpless than in a free fall… during a thunderstorm…for 40 minutes.

Lt. Col. William Rankin and another pilot were each flying an F-8 Crusader fighter jet over North Carolina in July 1959. They climbed to 47,000 feet to get above a cumulonimbus thunderstorm cloud, and the gathering storm below. As they prepared to begin their descent, Rankin heard a rumble in his engines. The power went out, and a warning light signaled fire. He tried to restart the engines, to no avail, and the plane plunged into the cloud at nearly supersonic speed. This made “ejecting into a thunderstorm” his best option.

KEEPIN’ COOL

The air outside the plane was –50°F, causing instant frostbite. The rapid decompression at that altitude caused Rankin’s abdomen to swell, and he immediately began bleeding from anywhere exposed that he could bleed from: his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Only the oxygen canister attached to his helmet allowed him to keep breathing and remain alert.

From an altitude of nine miles above the earth, Rankin knew it would take a little more than three minutes of free fall before he reached an altitude that would trigger the automatic release on his parachute. He checked his watch. After four minutes, his chute still hadn’t deployed, and Rankin worried it had malfunctioned, so he pulled the chute manually.

LIFE IN HAIL

What Rankin didn’t realize was that the massive updraft within the thundercloud was slowing his descent, which was why his chute hadn’t deployed on its own. As soon as he released it, the updraft on the parachute pulled him back up higher into the cloud at nearly 100 miles per hour.

He was pelted with hail, and the air was so thick with water that he had to hold his breath for fear he would drown. The only break in the darkness came from frequent bursts of lightning, which Rankin said looked like blue blades several feet thick.

When the updraft ran out of steam, Rankin began falling again, tangled in his parachute. Miraculously, he was able to untangle himself from the chute, only to be pulled up by another updraft. And so the cycle continued, with Rankin being pulled up into the cloud and then falling with his chute tangled around him. It was like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, although Rankin probably didn’t see the humor at the time.

Finally, the storm weakened, and on one of his downward trajectories, Rankin descended all the way to the ground in a North Carolina forest. He looked at his watch. It was nearly 40 minutes after he had ejected from the plane. Covered in blood and vomit, and suffering from decompression shock, he wandered to a nearby road. Someone stopped and picked him up. After three weeks in the hospital, Rankin was released and resumed his military career as a pilot.