Grahame Donald

[rexee]

Please excuse if this has been previously discussed here on the forum.Is the event described here possible?
Rex

"One summer's afternoon in 1917, Grahame Donald attempted a new manoeuvre in his Sopwith Camel. He flew the machine up and over, and as he reached the top of his loop, hanging upside down, 6,000ft above the ground, his safety belt snapped and he fell out. He was not wearing a parachute; they were not issued to British pilots in the belief that their availability would impair fighting spirit.
Hurtling to earth, with nothing to break his fall, Donald's death was seconds away – but it didn't come. In an interview given 55 years later, he explained: "The first 2,000ft passed very quickly and terra firma looked damnably 'firma'. As I fell, I began to hear my faithful little Camel somewhere nearby. Suddenly I fell back on to her." " The Camel had continued its loop downwards, and Donald landed on its top wing. He grabbed it with both hands, hooked one foot into the cockpit, wrestled himself back in, struggled to take control, and executed "an unusually good landing". "

[crankcase]

... but it reminds me of Louis Strange's incident when he fell out of his cockpit and managed to hang on to the drum of his Lewis gun. Eventually he pulled himself back in and righted the craft.

To fall completely out and meet the plane again sounds a little bit like Baron von Munchhausen!
marc

[rexee]

Hi marc
I agree,it's a great story, but...!