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cupra · February 16th 07, 04:09 PM posted to uk.sci.weather

Col wrote:
" cupra" wrote in message
...
Gianna wrote:
From the Met Office:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/.../18063745.html

Reminds me of the pilot who ejected in the middle of a storm.....

He became a hailstone?

Nearly!

Planet Earth. Storms. (Author: A.B.C. Whipple.) Time-Life Books,
Amsterdam, 1989. 11th printing of 1982 edition. Pages 121-122.

"One pilot who experienced the furies and lived to tell about it was a
U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot who spent more than half an hour,
alone and dangling endlessly from a parachute's slender shrouds, at
the mercy of the maelstrom.

For Lietenant Colonel William H. Rankin, a decorated veteran of World
War II and the Korean War, the sunny Sunday of July 26, 1959, promised
to be routine in every respect. He was scheduled to make a simple
600-mile navigational flight from South Weymouth, Massachusetts, to
Beaufort, North Carolina, in his F8U Crusador jet fighter. Just
before his late afternoon departure he checked with the meteorologist
at the Massachusetts air station and was told he might run into
thunderstorms, with cloudtops at 30,000 to 40,000 feet around Norfolk
Virginia. The forescast was nothing to worry an experienced pilot.
"Well," said Rankin, "I'll go to 50,000 and get over the weather."

Nearing Nofolk at about 6 p.m., Rankin saw the black and rolling mass
of a thunderstorm, its tops slightly hiher than the predicetd 40,000
feet. Then, as he climbed to 47,000 feet, Rankin heard a thump and a
rumbling sound within his plane, the bright red fire-warning light
flashed on, and the aircraft rapidly lost power. Examination of the
wreckage later disclosed that the plane had suffered an engine
seizure, caused by extreme friction of unknown cause. Some 20 seconds
after he first heard the ominous noises, while he was still at 47,000
feet, Rankin ejected.

"I had never heard of anyone's having ejected at this altitude," he
wrote later. "The temperture outside was close to 70 below zero. I had
on only a summerweight flying suit, gloves, helmet and marine field
shoes." As he hurtled through the air, Rankin almost instantly felt
an intense stinging sensation ... At the same time, the sudden change
from the ... cockpit ... caused an agonizing decompression. "I could
feel ...[several very painful things ...].

Surprisingly, Rankin's free fall into the thundercloud brough relief.
His parachute ... was designed to open at 10,000 feet ... Even as he
plummeted at 10,000 feet per minute, Rankin ... glanced at his wrist
watch. He had ejected at exactly 6:00 ... it was now 6:05 ... a few
seconds later his chute opened.

Assuming he was now at 10,000 feet ... Rankin began to relax ... his
awful ride had only just begun ... Rankin was about to enter the heart
of the storm.

"A massive blast of air jarred me from head to toe", he recalled. I
weant soaring up and up and up. Falling again... I became a molecule
trapped in the thermal pattern of the heat engine, buffeted in all
directions ... up, down, sideways, clockwide, counterclockwise, over
and over ... zoomed straight up, straight down ... G forces -
positive, negative and zero. I was stretched, slammed and pounded ...
At one point, after I had been shot up like a shell leaving a cannon
.. raining so torrentially that I though I would drown.

At last, Rankin sensed that the turbulence was diminishing ... saw
beneath him a patch of green earth. Minutes later - after smashing
into the trunk of a tree - he came to ground. The time was 6.40.

After his experience, Rankin was much the worse for wear ... bruises,
lacerations ... torso swelled ... strained, sprained ... loss of
equilibrium ... but recovered rapidly and was soon flying again.