Free Fall

The Free Fall Research Page

Free Fall Travel Destinations

At some of the locations where these incidents occurred there are memorials or plaques.

Name	Type	Description	Location
Ogwyn George	Wreckage Rider	Sylling, Norway	There is a plaque at the crash site and the crew members are buried in a local cemetery
Juliane Koepcke	Wreckage Rider	Pucallpa, Peru	There is a memorial to the crash victims at Pucallpa airport
Alan Magee	Free Faller	St. Nazaire, France	There is a plaque at the crash site. Also of interest are the train station where he landed and a museum with the noseart from his B-17
Alfred Muhler	Wreckage Rider (see the Incident Log)	Sint-Amandsberg, Belgium (suburb of Ghent)	There is a plaque at the crash site
Ray Noury	Unlucky Skydiver	Dubec Hill, near the villages of Pradlo and Nepomuk, Czech Republic	The monument is set to be dedicated in May of 2009. There is also a museum with some relics of the crash in nearby Blovice.
R.B. Reed	Wreckage Rider (see the Incident Log)	Steinegg, Italy	There is a memorial at the crash site
Vesna Vulovic	Wreckage Rider	Srbska Kamenice, Czech Republic	There is a memorial at the crash site

Send Us Your Photograph at Any of These Sites and We'll Post It

If you visit any of these sites (or any Free Fall site, whether there is a monument or not), please take pictures and send them to us. If you like, we will post your picture on this page.
Here are some examples:

LZ37 zeppelin crash in Sint-Amandsberg, Belgium (Alfred Muhler)

Lois Frotten's fall into Mystic Lake, Marstons Mills, Cape Cod

Joshua Hanson's fall from the Hyatt Regency in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Lynda Harding fall into Lake Elsinore (California)

George Bushor's fall at Pine Island Park in Manchester, New Hampshire

Ogwyn George's fall in Sylling, Norway

LZ37 zeppelin crash in Sint-Amandsberg, Belgium
Jim Hamilton at the site of the LZ37 zeppelin crash in Sint-Amandsberg, Belgium

Lois Frotten, Mystic Lake, Marstons Mills, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA
The following three pictures relate to Lois Frotten's fall into Mystic Lake. See the Unlucky Skydivers page for more details.

Jim Hamilton at Marstons Mills airport where her flight took off

Jim Hamilton near Mystic Lake

A view of Mystic Lake

Joshua Hanson, Hyatt Regency hotel, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
The following pictures were taken at the site of Joshua Hanson's fall from the 17th story of the Hyatt Regency hotel in Minneapolis. Search for 'Joshua Hanson' on the Home page for more details.

Jim Hamilton at the site of the fall. Hanson landed on the first floor roof near the window in the background.

View of the Hyatt Regency from the skywalk across the street.

View from the 17th floor window through which Hanson fell.

An outside view of the 25-story Hyatt Regency Minneapolis. Count down nine window panes to get to the 17th floor.

Lynda Harding, Unlucky Skydiver, Lake Elsinore, California, USA
Lynda Harding survived a fall with a failed parachute in April of 2001. I'm not sure about the exact location where this incident took place, but it did happen in Lake Elsinore. (See the Unlucky Skydivers page.) Here is a picture of the lake.

And here I am at the edge of town.

George Bushor, Unlucky Skydiver, Manchester, New Hampshire, USA
In September of 1909, George Bushor, described as a one-armed aeronaut, ascended in a balloon at Pine Island Park in New Hampshire with the intention of descending by parachute. However the parachute failed to operate properly so he cut loose at about 2,000 feet and fell into a pond. The Manchester Union wrote that he "came down with lightning rapidity and created consternation among the several hundred spectators who witnessed the incident." According to the account several women fainted. Bushor was rescued by several park employees in a boat and was found to be uninjured. He made another jump later the same day.

Here's a link to the transcription of the Manchester Union article describing the incident.

Here I am in the park.

A shot of the pond.

Ogwyn George's fall in Sylling, Norway
On April 9, 1940, an RAF 201 Squadron Sunderland Flying Boat with a ten-man crew left Portsmouth harbor on a reconnaissance mission to Norway. They did not know that Germany had just invaded Norway…

Leading Aircraftman Ogwyn George was a tail-gunner on that Sunderland, which was quickly set aflame over Sylling, Norway by two German Messerschmitt 110s. George's parachute had been destroyed by the flames so he returned to his turret and was there when the aircraft exploded. The turret, with him inside, was separated from the Sunderland and he fell into a snow bank on the hills where locals who saw the wreckage fall rescued him. He had no injuries from the fall but was burned by the explosion and had frostbite from the snow. He was the only survivor.

In August of 2025 I went to Sylling and visited the graveyard where the rest of George's crew was buried. The stones with the red flowers in front of them are for British airmen. The aircraft came down in pieces in the hills that can be seen behind the chapel.

The men from George's crew are:

Aircraftman 2nd Class, G. Eveson

Aircraftman 1st Class, R.L. Millar

Aircraftman 1st Class, G.H. Maile

Aircraftman, D.W.B. Upham

Leading Aircraftman, F.A. Morrison

Sergeant J.A.L. Barter

Sergeant J.C. Carpenter

Pilot Officer A.F. Le Maistre

Flight Lieutenant, P.W.H. Kite

You will note that there are ten similar graves. Most are for George's crew. The tenth grave, the one on the far left, belongs to another British airman, Leading Aircraftman J. Ellwood. His aircraft was shot down nearby on April 30, 1940.

Somewhere in these hills above the town of Sylling there is a monument at the crash site. No one could tell me exactly where it it. One local pointed out a path into the woods, but it did not lead to the monument. I know from other sources that the text on the monument reads in part:
"This stone has been erected to commemorate the first British to give their lives in the struggle for freedom (1940-1945)."