[Vhfcn-l] Fwd: Suspended in Midair with Little Chance of Survival

[DARRELL ELMORE]

In bloody incredible! Thanks for the story.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 2, 2021, at 1:17 AM, Richard Lewis via Vhfcn-l <vhfcn-l at lists.vhfcn.org> wrote:
> 
> Great story, thanks for posting.
> 
> Richard lewisMsg, USA {ret} 
> 
>    On Sunday, August 1, 2021, 09:47:10 PM MDT, Loren McAnally via Vhfcn-l <vhfcn-l at lists.vhfcn.org> wrote:  
> 
> Great story! Thanks for posting
> 
> Blue36
> 
> On Sun, Aug 1, 2021 at 7:39 PM James Evans via Vhfcn-l <
> vhfcn-l at lists.vhfcn.org> wrote:
> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> LITTLE KNOWN PIECE OF HISTORY?
>>>> 
>>>> Suspended in Midair with Little Chance of Survival…>> …>> …>> then
>> another plane came to his rescue
>>>>>>>>   <>Almost 80 years after it unfolded in the sky over San Diego, a
>> nearly impossible rescue mission remains one of the most daring feats in
>> aeronautical history.
>>>>>>>> Courtesy Rick Lawrence (portrait), Shutterstock (4),  archive.org <
>> http://archive.org/>  (government document)
>>>>>>>> It began like any other May morning in California. The sky was
>> blue, the sun hot. A slight breeze riffled the glistening waters of San
>> Diego Bay. At the naval airbase on North Island, all was calm.
>>>>>>>> At 9:45 a.m., Walter Osipoff, a sandy-haired 23-year-old Marine
>> second lieutenant from Akron, Ohio, boarded a DC-2 transport for a routine
>> parachute jump. Lt. Bill Lowrey, a 34-year-old Navy test pilot from New
>> Orleans, was already putting his observation plane through its paces. And
>> John McCants, a husky 41-year-old aviation chief machinist’s mate from
>> Jordan, Montana, was checking out the aircraft that he was scheduled to fly
>> later. Before the sun was high in the noonday sky, these three men would be
>> linked forever in one of history’s most spectacular midair rescues.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Osipoff was a seasoned parachutist, a former collegiate wrestling
>> and gymnastics star. He had joined the National Guard and then the Marines
>> in 1938. He had already made more than 20 jumps by May 15, 1941.
>>>>>>>> That morning, his DC-2 took off and headed for Kearney Mesa, where
>> Osipoff would supervise practice jumps by 12 of his men. Three separate
>> canvas cylinders, containing ammunition and rifles, were also to be
>> parachuted overboard as part of the exercise.
>>>>>>>> Nine of the men had already jumped when Osipoff, standing a few
>> inches from the plane’s door, started to toss out the last cargo container
>> Somehow the automatic-release cord of his backpack parachute became looped
>> over the cylinder, and his chute was suddenly ripped open. He tried to grab
>> hold of the quickly billowing silk, but the next thing he knew he had been
>> jerked from the plane—sucked out with such force that the impact of his
>> body ripped a 2.5-foot gash in the DC-2’s aluminum fuselage.
>>>>>>>> Instead of flowing free, Osipoff’s open parachute now wrapped
>> itself around the plane’s tail wheel. The chute’s chest strap and one leg
>> strap had broken; only the second leg strap was still holding—and it had
>> slipped down to Osipoff’s ankle. One by one, 24 of the 28 lines between his
>> precariously attached harness and the parachute snapped. He was now hanging
>> some 12 feet below and 15 feet behind the tail of the plane. Four parachute
>> shroud lines twisted around his left leg were all that kept him from being
>> pitched to the earth.
>>>>>>>> Dangling there upside down, Osipoff had enough presence of mind to
>> not try to release his emergency parachute. With the plane pulling him one
>> way and the emergency chute pulling him another, he realized that he would
>> be torn in half. Conscious all the while, he knew that he was hanging by
>> one leg, spinning andbouncing—and he was aware that his ribs hurt. He did
>> not know then that two ribs and three vertebrae had been fractured.
>>>>>>>> Inside the plane, the DC-2 crew struggled to pull Osipoff to
>> safety, but they could not reach him. The aircraft was starting to run low
>> on fuel, but an emergency landing with Osipoff dragging behind would
>> certainly smash him to death. And pilot Harold Johnson had no radio contact
>> with the ground.
>>>>>>>> To attract attention below, Johnson eased the transport down to 300
>> feet and              started circling North Island. A few people at the
>> base noticed the plane coming by every few minutes, but they assumed that
>> it was towing some sort of target.
>>>>>>>> Meanwhile, Bill Lowrey had landed his plane and was walking toward
>> his office when he glanced upward. He and John McCants, who was working
>> nearby, saw at the same time the figure dangling from the plane. As the
>> DC-2 circled once again, Lowrey yelled to McCants, “There’s a man hanging
>>> on that line. Do you suppose we can get him?” McCants answered grimly, “We
>>> can try.”
>>>>>>>>> Lowrey shouted to his mechanics to get his plane ready for takeoff.
>>> It was an SOC-1, a two-seat, open-cockpit observation plane, less than 27
>>> feet long. Recalled Lowrey afterward, “I didn’t even know how much fuel it
>>> had.” Turning to McCants, he said, “Let’s go!”
>>>>>>>>> Lowrey and McCants had never flown together before, but the two men
>>> seemed to take it for granted that they were going to attempt the
>>> impossible. “There was only one decision to be made,” Lowrey later said
>>> quietly, “and that was to go get him. How, we didn’t know. We had no time
>>> to plan.”
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Courtesy National Archives (Photo No. 127-N-522950)
>>>>>>>>> Lt. Col. John J Capolino, a Philadelphia artist, painted this scene
>>> of Osipoff’s rescue in the 1940s. It belongs to the National Museum of the
>>> Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia.
>>>>>>>>> Nor was there time to get through to their commanding officer and
>>> request permission for the flight. Lowrey simply told the tower, “Give me a
>>> green light. I’m taking off.” At the last moment, a Marine ran out to the
>>> plane with a hunting knife—for cutting Osipoff loose—and dumped it in
>>> McCants’s lap.
>>>>>>>>> As the SOC-1 roared aloft, all activity around San Diego seemed to
>>> stop. Civilians crowded rooftops, children stopped playing at recess, and
>>> the men of North Island strained their eyes upward. With murmured prayers
>>> and pounding hearts, the watchers agonized through every move in the
>>> impossible mission.
>>>>>>>>> Within minutes, Lowrey and McCants were under the transport, flying
>>> at 300 feet. They made five approaches, but the air proved too bumpy to try
>>> for a rescue. Since radio communication between the two planes was
>>> impossible, Lowrey hand-signaled Johnson to head out over the Pacific,
>>> where the air would be smoother, and they climbed to 3,000 feet. Johnson
>>> held his plane on a straight course and reduced speed to that of the
>>> smaller plane—100 miles an hour.
>>>>>>>>> Lowrey flew back and away from Osipoff, but level with him.
>>> McCants, who was in the open seat in back of Lowrey, saw that Osipoff was
>>> hanging by one              foot and that blood was dripping from his
>>> helmet. Lowrey edged the plane closer with such precision that his
>>> maneuvers jibed with the swings of Osipoff’s inert body. His timing had to
>>> be exact so that Osipoff did not smash into the SOC-1’s propeller.
>>>>>>>>> Finally, Lowrey slipped his upper left wing under Osipoff’s shroud
>>> lines, and McCants, standing upright in the rear cockpit—with the plane
>>> still going 100 miles an hour 3,000 feet above the sea— lunged for Osipoff.
>>> He grabbed him at the waist, and Osipoff flung his arms around McCants’s
>>> shoulders in a death grip.
>>>>>>>>> McCants pulled Osipoff into the plane, but since it was only a two-
>>> seater, the next problem was where to put him. As Lowrey eased the SOC-1
>>> forward to get some slack in the chute lines, McCants managed to stretch
>>> Osipoff’s body across the top of the fuselage, with Osipoff’s head in his
>>> lap.
>>>>>>>>> Because McCants was using both hands to hold Osipoff in a vise,
>>> there was no way for him to cut the cords that still attached Osipoff to
>>> the DC-2. Lowrey then nosed his plane inch by inch closer to the transport
>>> and, with incredible precision, used his propeller to cut the shroud lines.
>>> After hanging for 33 minutes between life and death, Osipoff was finally
>>> free.
>>>>>>>>> Lowrey had flown so close to the transport that he’d nicked a 12-
>>> inch gash in              its tail. But now the parachute, abruptly
>>> detached along with the shroud lines, drifted downward and wrapped itself
>>> around Lowrey’s rudder. That meant that Lowrey had to fly the SOC-1 without
>>> being able to control it properly and with most of Osipoff’s body still on
>>> the outside. Yet, five minutes later, Lowrey somehow managed to touch down
>>> at North Island, and the little plane rolled to a stop. Osipoff finally
>>> lost consciousness—but not before he heard sailors applauding the landing.
>>>>>>>>> Later on, after lunch, Lowrey and McCants went back to their usual
>>> duties. Three weeks later, both men were flown to Washington, DC, where
>>> Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox awarded them the Distinguished Flying
>>> Cross for executing “one of the most brilliant and daring rescues in naval
>>> history.”
>>>>>>>>> Osipoff spent the next six months in the hospital. The following
>>> January, completely recovered and newly promoted to first lieutenant, he
>>> went back to parachute jumping. The morning he was to make his first jump
>>> after the accident, he was cool and laconic, as usual. His friends, though,
>>> were nervous. One after another, they went up to reassure him. Each
>>> volunteered to jump first so he could follow.
>>>>>>>>> Osipoff grinned and shook his head. “The hell with that!” he said
>>> as he fastened his parachute. “I know damn well I’m going to make it.” And
>>> he did.
>>>>>>>>> This article first appeared in the May 1975 edition of Reader’s
>>> Digest.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>> 
>> 
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