[kaki3152]

Just found this on the Web:

"Alan Magee was a ball turret gunner on an American B-17 bomber that was shot up and began spinning out of control over France on Jan. 3, 1943. Magee's parachute was unusable, but he jumped anyway, losing consciousness as he fell about 20,000 feet. He crashed through the glass skylight of the St. Nazaire train station and suffered severe injuries. Yet Magee recovered, enjoying backpacking until his death at age 84. Magee's 4-mile plunge was well-documented, but it's not clear how he survived. Some believe the angle of the skylight deflected his fall."

I have heard of a Lancaster crewman who bailed out w/out a parachute and landed in the snow relatively uninjured. Or the Yugoslav stewardess who survived a similar fall when her airliner suffered a bomb attack in mid air.