Did you know about the airmen who fell without a parachute and lived?

Surviving a fall from a plane without a parachute is one of those miracles that sound impossible but have still happened a few times in history. With the scale of air operations during World War II, it is still incredible, but perhaps understandable, that several such incidents have occurred during the war.
 
On January 11, 1944, two B-17 (The B-17 Flying Fortress) bomber formations flew into each other in heavy cloud cover over Greece, causing multiple fatal collisions. The tail of one plane broke off, with tail gunner James Raley in it. He was pinned down by ammunition and airplane parts and couldn’t bail out, and he crashed into a clump of trees 3.7 miles (6 km) below, only surviving because the control surfaces of the tail assembly kept flapping around in the wind, slowing down the descent somewhat. The bottom hatch he normally would have exited through was flush against the ground; he opened the bulkhead leading into the rest of the plane, only then realizing that the plane was gone!

Tail gunner Gene Moran had a similar story on November 29, 1943, only his B-17 tail section was ripped off by German gun fire after his Flying Fortress fell behind the rest of the formation over Germany and got ganged up on by enemy interceptors. His parachute was shredded, and the tail fell off from the rest of the plane before he could get his spare. Like Raley, Moran was saved by the control surfaces of the empennage slowing his fall, and by a forest acting as a cushion. He survived with serious injuries and was captured by the Germans.

Fellow American Alan Magee was not a tail, but a ball turret gunner. On January 3, 1943, his turret was hit and rendered inoperable by German flak during a daytime bombing mission over Saint-Nazaire (“The greatest raid of all”). He got out of the turret, noticed his parachute was torn, and was crossing the bomb bay to the radio room when a flak hit took off the plane’s wing, causing the Flying Fortress to go into a spin. Magee blacked out from the lack of oxygen 4 miles (6.5 km) above the ground, and was thrown clear of the plane. He crashed into the glass roof of the local railroad station and got entangled on the steel girders. He suffered numerous injuries including 28 shrapnel hits, and his right arm was nearly severed, but German doctors saved his life.

British Lancaster (Avro Lancaster) tail gunner Nicholas Alkemade made a conscious decision to jump, rather than falling involuntarily. On March 24, 1944, his plane was set on fire by a German fighter over Germany, and it began to spiral out of control. Alkemade’s parachute was also on fire. He had to make a choice: stay and burn to death in the flame, or jump. He jumped. He fell 3.4 miles (5.4 km), landed on fir trees and thick snow, and was captured by the Germans. He was interviewed by the Gestapo, who initially refused to believe he could survive such a fall. An investigation of the wreck and the remains of his parachute eventually convinced the Germans, who even gave him an official certificate testifying to the fact before shipping him off to a POW camp.

Soviet navigator Ivan Chisov is the outlier story here, not only because he was not a tail gunner, but also because he actually had a parachute, it just didn’t open. His Ilyushin Il-4 bomber was shot down in January 1942, and he bailed out at an altitude of about 3.4 miles. The battle was still raging around him and he was afraid that German pilots might target him while he was descending slowly, so he decided to stay in freefall and only open his parachute further down. The rare air, however, caused him to lose consciousness, and he couldn’t pull the rip cord. He struck the edge of a snowy ravine -with a speed of around 120-150 mph, slid to the bottom, and was quickly rescued by a Soviet cavalry unit that was watching the air battle from the ground.

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