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Re: Tipping the air out of a parachute at 28000
Hi,
I can't speak as a verteran B17 crewman, but i can speak as a veteran of over 1000 sport parachute jumps a few hundred in my early days on round canopies.
28,000ft is a long way up and the crewman would not have been conscious for very long at all. Its certainly possible to collapse a parachute by pulling in on one of the risers and a roud parachute would soon stream and lose height rapidly. We always used to say we needed oxygen at 20,000 feet in the uk and i admitt to only every getting out several times at this height, usually 14k in Britain. A round parachute would open straight away after it had collapsed only falling a few hundred feet each time, thats a lot of passes by the fighter to get him down to a safe height. I am more inclined to think it was a game by the Luftwaffe pilot, i have read accounts of pilots doing this for fun over Malta and actually posted that quetion on this forum a few months back.
I think it was a happy Luftwaffe pilot having a bit of "fun" at a downed US crewmans expense.
Regards
Jon
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