A LETTER FROM LONDON

Northern Advocate, 22 January 1927, Page 8

A LETTER FROM LONDON

NEWS AND NOTES. (All Rights Reserved.) December 9, 1926. AMAZING AIR ESCAjPadE. Even with our sceptical R.A.F. the parachute is already established a.s a vital safeguard, and has now quite an impressive list of averted casualties to its credit. But the most amazing instance ever likely to bo recorded comes from America, not as a suspect journalistic story, but narrated with almost naive simplicity in an official ILS. report. Two flying men were making from one station to another by air, and a sudden air pocket over mountainous country caused the machine to dip violently. The pilot turned round, just before landing, to speak to his observer. Not seeing the hitter in his seat, lie concluded that he was stooping below in the cockpit. But on landing at the objective station,and getting out of the machine, he found that, his companion was missing. Almost immediately after this startling discovery, there came a telephone cad. A REAL THRILL. It was the missing observer, ringing up to intimate that he was quite safe. What had happened is almost too thrilling for a film drama. The sudden dip of the air pocket jerked the oberver, who was dozing in his scat, clean out of the machine.. He awoke with a desperate start to find himself gliding, in mid-air, just, past the michine’s rudder, at which he made a frantic but vain grab with his hands. Had he not been wearing the regulation parachute, with its patent release, strapped to his back, no miracle could have saved him. He would have been dashed to pieces on the mountain below. But disciplined instinct acted even in that moment and he released his parachute by pulling the loop in front of him. A "' iiu,tes later ho was safely standing on ten a lima, wondering what his companion, the pilot, would conjecture. These arc the sort of adventures that happen m 1926.