AMAZING ESCAPE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIX, Issue 21971, 24 May 1941, Page 5

AMAZING ESCAPE

AIRMAN WITHOUT A PARACHUTE The man who is helping to train Britain’s parachute troops, SquadronLeader L. A. Strange, had the most astounding flying escape in history. And at the time he had no parachute with him, writes a Royal Air Force correspondent. It was on May 10, 1915, when, in an 80 h.p. Martynside biplane, he was chasing an enemy machine over Menin, at a height of 8500 feet. As he had just emptied the first drum of his Lewis gun, mounted on the top wing of the aeroplane, he reached up to remove it. But the drum stuck. Raising himself from the seat in the cockpit and holding the control column steady between his knees, he gripped the drum with both hands. As he. did so the aeroplane spun over and he was flung out. But he kept hold of the drum, dangling down in the air. “I had been cursing because I could not get that drum off,” he says. “Now I prayed fervently that it would stay on for ever. Its edges were cutting my fingers badly. “The first thing I thought of was to get one of my hands on the top of the centre section strut. I knew it was behind and above me, though where exactly I could not tell. "Dare I let go the drum with one hand and make a grab for it? I decided that it was the only thing I could do. J‘l let go—and my hand found the strut. Then I released my other hand and gripped the strut on the other side.” This swung him round so that he now faced forward. “The propeller seemed unpleasantly close. Now I kept on kicking upwards behind me. At last I got one foot and then the other hooked in the cockpit. Somehow I got the control column between my legs and jammed on full aileron and elevator. “The machine came over and I fell into my seat with a bump. My fall sent me right through the seat, on the controls, which I was jamming. “I pulled out the broken bits and freed the controls.” On returning frem patrol the observer in the German aeroplane reported he had seen the British pilot thrown out of his machine. The Germans spent hours searching the countryside for the wreckage of the aeroplane.