Free Fall

The Free Fall Research Page

Recommended Reading

Do you want to survive an Unplanned Freefall?

If so, check out these survival tips from David Carkeet.

Two great, but hard-to-find books

We highly recommend both of these books, but good luck finding them, they are difficult to come by:

Into the Silk: True Stories of the Caterpillar Club by Ian Mackersey, London, Robert Hale Ltd., 1956.
Jump for It!: Stories of the Caterpillar Club by Gerald Bowman, London, Evans Brothers Ltd., 1955.

Another book on the Caterpillar Club

Here's another book on the Caterpillar Club, though there's not much in it on falling it does include a great list of the early Caterpillar Club members:

Jump! Tales of the Caterpillar Club by Don Glassman, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1930

Another Important Reference

Subtitled "Incredible death-defying stories of survival against all odds," this book by John Adams describes a wide range of amazing survival stories. Pay special attention to the first 80 pages.

Dangling from the Golden Gate Bridge and Other Narrow Escapes by John Anthony Adams, New York, Ballantine Books, 1988.

They Fell Without Parachutes - And Lived!

Paul Brickhill, the author of "The Great Escape" wrote an article called "They Fell Without Parachutes - And Lived!" It appeared in the June 1950 issue of Blue Book magazine. Many thanks to William Contento and Mike Ashley for their help in locating this article for me. Brickhill was in prison camp with many aviators and spoke to Nicholas Alkemade, Joe Herman, and others about their experiences and recorded them in this article. This is likely the first published account of such stories. In regard to the Free Fall Research Page it is like the Rosetta Stone.

Human Survivability of Extreme Impacts in Free-Fall

For those of you who are interested in a scientific take on surviving falls from around 50 to 250 feet, you should look into the work of Richard G. Snyder. In the 1960s Snyder was the author or co-author of two interesting pieces of research:

Human Survivability of Extreme Impacts in Free-Fall
(NTIS Publication AD425412)
Fatal Injuries Resulting from Extreme Water Impact
(NTIS Publication AD688424)

Neither of these documents describes falls out of airplanes (there is a lot on suicidal jumps from the Golden Gate Bridge however), but they do have a connection to airplane accidents, as becomes clear from Mary Roach's book "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers." Roach describes Snyder's work because of its value in determining the cause of an airline disaster over deep water, where the only evidence that may be available are the recovered bodies of passengers.

Both of these articles are available from NTIS, the National Technical Information Service. If you are interested in purchasing either of these documents, NTIS can be reached at 800-553-6847 or www.ntis.gov.

Update: One of Dr. Snyder's studies is available in its entirely on the web. See Study of Impact Tolerance through Free-Fall Investigations (1977).

Hugh de Haven and Richard Snyder

IP Online, an international peer review journal for health professionals and others in injury prevention, has in its web-accessible database a 1942 study by Hugh de Haven called "Mechanical analysis of survival in falls from heights of fifty to one hundred and fifty feet." These folks didn't fall out of airplanes, in fact, it appears as if most jumped from apartment buildings. The writing is clinical and the subject is pretty gruesome, but de Haven's work takes the details from these sad tales of survival with the intent of using the knowledge gained to improve the survival chances of people in aircraft and automobile accidents.

De Haven's work was continued by Richard Snyder (see above) whose research entitled "Human Survivability of Extreme Impacts in Free-Fall" and "Fatal Injuries Resulting from Extreme Water Impact" are part of the body of research that helped in the development of seatbelts and airbags. Snyder's work first came to our attention in Mary Roach's book "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers." Roach describes Snyder's work because of its value in determining the cause of an airline disaster over deep water, where the only evidence that may be available are the recovered bodies of passengers. Their injuries may provide clues about the cause of the accident.

The de Haven study is overwhelming reading. When you are done reading you want to go outside and take a breath of air. It's not the kind of life's work that a typical person could face day-in/day-out. IP Online calls "Mechanical analysis..." an "Injury Classic." If you are interested in having a look, check out IP Online and search on "de Haven" to find de Haven's study.

Note: Tim Hoult wrote in to say "De Haven's work is incredibly important in the field of crash protection - it seemed to kickstart the industry into actually doing something. Even more amazing is the fact that he might not have been around to write it. He was the only survivor in a mid-air collision of two JN-4s several hundred feet above the ground in 1917 - his major internal injuries only being caused by, ironically, his seat belt buckle!"

Books Written by Unlucky Skydivers

I guess if you survive a fall with a failed parachute, you feel like writing a book:

Golf God's Way by Gus Bernardoni, Carol Stream, Illinois, Creation House, 1978.
Currahee! A Screaming Eagle at Normandy by Donald Burgett, New York, Dell, 2000 (paperback), originally published in 1967
The Kid Who Climbed Everest by Bear Grylls (also published under the title "Facing Up: A Remarkable Journey to the Summit of Mount Everest")
A Life in War and Peace by Brian Urquhart, New York, W.W. Norton, 1987.

Other Books

Some other interesting books:

Snakes in the Cockpit: Images of Military Aviation Disasters by L. Douglas Keeney, MBI Publishing, 2002. See page 108 for an interesting ejection photo sequence.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not Encyclopedia of the Bizarre Mentions several amazing survival stories related to falling from airplanes.
The Man Who Rode the Thunder by William H. Rankin, Prentice Hall, 1960. Rankin is the one who bailed out in a storm and had the ride of his life in his parachute.
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales, W.W. Norton, 2003. Gonzales is the son of Federico Gonzales (see Wreckage Riders).
The Second-Luckiest Pilot: Adventures in Military Aviation by D.K. Tooker, Naval Institute Press, 2000. Tooker considers himself the second-luckiest pilot. The first-luckiest would be Cliff Judkins (see Other Amazing Stories).
Crash in the Jungle by Jim Alderson, Nelson Thornes, Ltd., 2001. This is a book for young readers about Juliane Koepcke's amazing fall into the Amazon jungle and her determined trek to survival (see Wreckage Riders).

Poetry Corner

At least two important poems are based on stories of people who fell to their deaths from airplanes:

Falling: James Dickey's "Falling" describes the fall (and death) of a stewardess who was sucked out of an airliner when a door opened unexpectedly. The poem is based on an actual incident that occurred in Connecticut in October of 1962. The poem appears in Dickey's "Poems 1957-1967" as well as in "Falling, May Day, Sermon, and Other Poems" and in the anthology "The Whole Motion: Collected Poems 1945-1992."
Bailey...Who Burned?: "Bailey...Who Burned?" comes from MacKinlay Kantor's "Glory for Me," a full book in verse that was the basis for the movie "The Best Years of Their Lives." Both Kantor and William Wyler (who directed "The Best Years of Their Lives") spent time with the U.S. Eighth Air Force in England. Kantor's poem is based on an actual incident. When a burning B-17 bomber goes down and one airman pulls his ripcord too soon upon exiting the plane, his parachute catches on fire and he falls to his death. A navigator in the 305th Bomb Group was the "Bailey" described by Kantor. See Bailey . . . Who Burned? for the poem text and additional details.