FLIER SAVES LIFE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20863, 15 August 1942, Page 4

FLIER SAVES LIFE

CUPPED ’CHUTE ON FALLING FROM PLANE BOMBER BLOWN UP (By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) (2 p.m.) RUGBY. Aug. 14. With amazing coolness and presence of mind, the captain of a bomber, which was blown to pieces during the 1000-bomber raid on Cologne on the night of July 30 clipped his parachute on to his harness after he was thrown out of the wrecked machine. I “We were set alight by fighters. I] gave the word to jump and reduced speed to make things easier,” commented the airman who is now a prisoner of war. “The second pilot handed me my parachute. At the same moment another attack carried away the port mainplane. We turned upside down and started spinning. 1 tried to stop the spin as none of us could move, but I could not get at the rudders and was about passing out with smoke. Also we were getting cooked. Suddenly there was a hell of a crash and I found myself alone in space with my parachute in rny hand, and I clipped it on—a difficult and alarming experience—and it opened at what seemed hardly more than tree height and landed very heavily. The sky was raining bits of aeroplane which must have come to pieces as we were all thing out like this, except the tail gunner.” The wireless operator also escaped and was taken prisoner, but the rest of the crew were killed. In bombers the crew wear harness but not a parachute, which is clipped on when the order is given to bail out.