![]() ![]() An Avro Lancaster/Image: Kogo in Wikimedia Commons Therefore, it is not surprising that in its curriculum there appears a second episode of amazing survival in fall: that of the sergeant Nicholas Stephen Alkemade, who lived his impressive experience only one month before the two companions mentioned before. It was a type of heavy four-engine bomber that came into service in 1942 and due to its characteristics it was usually used in low altitude night missions, accrediting some 156,000 missions until the end of the war. One of the most famous had an Avro 683 Lancaster as a starting point. ![]() But there were more, with the following being the most famous. The case of the Handley Page Halifax of the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) that exploded in the air when it was flying at 4,400 feet over the snowy Ruhr basin in 1944 and of which two of its men survived (Australian Lieutenant Joe Herman and flight officer John Vivash) with only one parachute, may seem exceptional. But, above all, luck was the differentiating element, as other crew members often lost their lives. In all of them there were common factors that explain the miraculous salvation of its protagonists, such as the trees that cushioned the bodies when they fell or a thick layer of snow at the end, always softer than the ground (an article by Catherine Berridge explains it from the point of view of Physics). There are a few, due to the numerous missions that were carried out and the frequency of shootdowns. That’s why entire books about World War II have been published on that specific subject and that’s why we’re also going to go into it by taking a look at the unusual cases of airmen who managed to survive incredible accidents. And, obviously, the more recent and prolonged they are, the better documented and the more curious stories we know about them. One of the most interesting aspects of wars is the anecdotal one. But they happened most during World War II. But this is not a unique case several more are known, one of them just a year earlier, the German teenager Juliane Koepcke, who came out alive from an accident in the Peruvian Amazon despite falling from 10,000 feet. In 1972 a Serbian hostess named Vesna Vulović became famous and is registered in the Guinness Book of Records for having survived the fall of her plane from over 32,000 feet in altitude.
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