Lieutenant Colonel William Henry Rankin (October 16, 1920 – July 6, 2009) was one of only two known persons to survive a fall from the top of a
cumulonimbus
Cumulonimbus (from Latin ''cumulus'', "heaped" and ''nimbus'', "rainstorm") is a dense, towering vertical cloud, typically forming from water vapor condensing in the lower troposphere that builds upward carried by powerful buoyant air currents. ...
thunderstorm
A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorms are some ...
cloud; the other was Ewa Wiśnierska. He was a pilot in the
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combi ...
and a
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
and
Korean War
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veteran. He was flying an
F-8 Crusader
The Vought F-8 Crusader (originally F8U) is a single-engine, supersonic, carrier-based air superiority jet aircraft built by Vought for the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps (replacing the Vought F7U Cutlass), and for the Fren ...
jet fighter
Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...
over a cumulonimbus cloud when the engine failed, forcing him to eject and parachute into the cloud. Rankin wrote a book about his experience, ''The Man Who Rode the Thunder''.
Ejection
On July 26, 1959, Rankin was flying from
Naval Air Station South Weymouth
Naval Air Station South Weymouth was an operational United States Navy airfield from 1942 to 1997 in South Weymouth, Massachusetts. It was first established as a regular Navy blimp base during World War II. During the postwar era the base became p ...
Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort
Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort or MCAS Beaufort is a United States Marine Corps (USMC) air base located northwest of the central business district of Beaufort, a city in Beaufort County, South Carolina, United States. About 4,700 personnel s ...
in
South Carolina
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, anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind"
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, seat = Columbia
, LargestCity = Charleston
, LargestMetro = ...
. He climbed over a thunderhead that peaked at ; then—at and at mach 0.82—he heard a loud bump and rumble from the engine. The engine stopped, and a fire warning light flashed. He pulled the lever to deploy auxiliary power, and it broke off in his hand. Though not wearing a
pressure suit
A pressure suit is a protective suit worn by high-altitude pilots who may fly at altitudes where the air pressure is too low for an unprotected person to survive, even breathing pure oxygen at positive pressure. Such suits may be either full-pr ...
, at 6:00 pm he ejected into the air. He suffered immediate
frostbite
Frostbite is a skin injury that occurs when exposed to extreme low temperatures, causing the freezing of the skin or other tissues, commonly affecting the fingers, toes, nose, ears, cheeks and chin areas. Most often, frostbite occurs in the ha ...
, and decompression caused his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth to bleed. His abdomen swelled severely. He did, however, manage to make use of his emergency oxygen supply.
Five minutes after he abandoned the plane, his parachute had not opened. While in the upper regions of the thunderstorm, with near-zero visibility, the parachute opened prematurely instead of at because the storm had affected the barometric parachute switch and caused it to open. After ten minutes, Rankin was still aloft, carried by
updraft
In meteorology, an updraft is a small-scale current of rising air, often within a cloud.
Overview
Localized regions of warm or cool air will exhibit vertical movement. A mass of warm air will typically be less dense than the surrounding regi ...
s and getting hit by
hailstone
Hail is a form of solid precipitation. It is distinct from ice pellets (American English "sleet"), though the two are often confused. It consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is called a hailstone. Ice pellets generally fal ...
s. Violent spinning and pounding caused him to vomit. Lightning appeared, which he described as blue blades several feet thick, and thunder that he could feel. The rain forced him to hold his breath to keep from drowning. One lightning bolt lit up the parachute, making Rankin believe he had died.
Conditions calmed, and he descended into a forest. His watch read 6:40 pm. It had been 40 minutes since he had ejected. He searched for help and eventually was admitted into a hospital at
. He suffered from frostbite, welts, bruises, and severe decompression.
In popular culture
Rankin wrote ''The Man Who Rode the Thunder'' about his experience;
Floyd C. Gale
''Galaxy Science Fiction'' was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published in Boston from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by a French-Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break into the American market. World Edit ...
called the book a "thrilling true adventure". His story was covered in the March 2, 2017 episode of The Dollop Podcast.
See also
*
Cloud suck
Cloud suck is a phenomenon commonly known in paragliding, hang gliding, and sailplane flying where pilots experience significant lift due to a thermal under the base of cumulus clouds, especially towering cumulus and cumulonimbus. The vertical ex ...