William Rankin // 209 // The man who rode the thunder

Transcript

It was a clear, sunny day, in July, 1959. William Rankin was flying a swept-wing F8U Crusader, a supersonic jet plane, in a routine high-altitude flight from Massachusetts to South Carolina. He was just below the speed of sound and had eased past 47,000 feet in a cruise climb to get over an unusually high thunderhead when his engine faltered and the red warning light was flashing in the cockpit. He only had seconds to analyze the situation and decide on a course of action. Almost every option would end in a complete disaster.

A pressure suit had recently been designed to bring high-altitude jet pilots back to life. The suit is meant to be worn where the air pressure is too low for an unprotected person to survive. Suits can either be full pressure, like a space suit, or partial pressure, which is used by aircrew. Partial-pressure suits work by providing mechanical counter-pressure to assist breathing at altitude. Unfortunately, William wasn’t wearing the suit. For protection against extremely low sub-zero temperatures and near-explosive decompression, he would have to rely on his helmet, gloves, and an ordinary summer-weight flying suit.

This meant that the exposed parts of his body, such as his eyeballs, could be instantly frozen; and from the split-second of ejection, every organ of his body, including eyes, ears, and nose, could be severely bruised, or ruptured by the rapid decompression. He needed to parachute through a thunderstorm, but this isn’t something you can learn in training classes. People had tried, but they died. A three-man civilian test crew nearly made it one time. They flew over Texas in a supersonic jet bomber, and were forced to bail out in a thunderstorm. All three of them floated through the storm, but once they hit the ground, they were dragged over rough terrain until they were battered to death. One of them smashed into the wall of a farmhouse, a mile from where he had landed.

In training, when it comes to thunderstorms, pilots are told to avoid them at all costs. Fly under them, above them, around them, hell, you can turn back. JUST DON’T FLY THROUGH THEM. Labs have attempted thunderstorm models, but you can’t predict how a thunderstorm will act in real situations. Will there be wind, hail, rain, lightning, thunder? How violent will the winds be? And what direction? There was a 3-year study from 1946 to 1949 which became known as the “Thunderstorm Project.” It was sponsored by the US Air Force, Navy, Weather Bureau and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. It was made up of a group of volunteer pilots, who flew P61’s, Black Widow night fighters, into a variety of thunderstorms. They were able to gather a lot of useful data.

William Rankin was held in the storm for nearly 40 minutes. He heard and felt the thunder and saw lightning up close. Just when he allowed himself to believe he had survived the worst of this ordeal, and he might actually survive, he was hit with a torrential rain, making it almost impossible to breathe without sucking in a mouthful of water.

The press dubbed William Rankin as a hero, and he said it became annoying. He didn’t feel like a hero. He was a Marine officer and a professional, who hoped to remain just that. He believed that his training had been geared towards mentally and physically being able to react to hazard and emergency.

BEGINNING

On the afternoon of April 23rd, 1940, less than a year after William Rankin graduated from Langley High School in Pittsburgh, he went to a recruiting office in the old Post Office building in downtown Pittsburgh to be sworn in. He was headed to boot camp. A group of men arrived by train, and when they stepped off, a Marine Sergeant shouted, “Fall in!” William was the first born of three children, and he had always enjoyed a little competition and he was a hard worker. As a kid, he had newspaper routes, shoveled coal, cut lawns, shoveled snow, delivered groceries, and set pins in a bowling alley. In high school, he excelled at team sports, and got several college scholarship offers due to his football record. He just didn’t feel that college was the right fit for him. He wanted to see the world and try new things. He worked on the railroad, in a carnival, and as a lifeguard at a resort, but he chose to be a Marine because he felt it would give him opportunities outside of Pittsburgh.

The training was intense, but he thrived on it. Much of his World War II service consisted of defending the island of Funafuti (foon-a-foo-tee), in the South Pacific. There were many bombing casualties, and a lot of the men that made it out alive, had severe mental trauma after what they witnessed. In the book, William mentioned that there was a bomb that landed among a group of sailors, and pieces of their bodies were found all over the trees. The survivors were sent to rest camps, but that often meant that the men didn’t end up getting back into the rotation, and they couldn’t go to war again. For William, this was a devastating thought, he wanted to stay in combat. As soon as he arrived in Hawaii, he applied for assignment to a fleet gunnery school in Honolulu, so he could be trained on the newest weapons. After 6 weeks, he was returned to Camp LeJeune (Luh-Jern) in North Carolina where he was an instructor in machine gun tactics.

This isn’t what he wanted at all. He wanted to go back to war, he didn’t want to become an instructor. He heard that officers were wanted for flight training, and he figured, that was his only choice. In the summer of 1945, he was sent to flight school in Dallas, Texas. Shortly after he started flight training, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (Hee-row-shee-muh). He received his wings in Pensacola, in September 1946. After he received his wings, he took advance fighter training in the F4U, Corsair, which lead to him being promoted to major in 1949.

In June,1950, he completed his Quantico tour, and he was in New York City when the Korean war broke headlines. William called to request his assignment, but he got sent to a desk job. He didn’t like it, but he did his job, and waited. In July, 1951, he was sent to Korea. One morning, the men were briefed on a situation where there were heavy casualties resulting from new and undiscovered artillery fire. They were told to fly up there and see what they could do. The enemy had brought in new, light automatic anti-aircraft weapons. William Rankin led the way, and the planes were zigzagging and changing altitude so the enemy couldn’t get a fix on them.

He saw a long, high ridge line of newly burned foliage. Puffs of smoke were billowing out of the canyon, it was muzzle blasts. William gave the instructions when everyone was in position, and he said he would drop his bomb at the edge of the woods, then the other men would drop theirs about 50 yards longer than his. He picked up speed, and just as he reached the edge of the woods, he pressed the release. The bombs all started dropping in the designated areas. As he came around to make his second run, the entire wooded area was on fire and hundreds of men were running. They were heading into a smaller wooded area at the other end of the canyon. William told his men to repeat the treatment.

As they went in for the second bombing, William saw streams of tracer bullets. He made a low pass and his plane jolted. He had been hit. He went into a sharp climb and saw smoke coming from the right side of the engine, and flames were in the cockpit behind the instrument panel. There was an intense heat on his legs, he was on fire and the oil pressure was gone. He had to bail out. He parachuted out of the plane and watched bullets, and puffs of smoke all around, as he cascaded down. He knew the enemies would have seen him bail out, so he was now in danger of being captured or killed. One of his men had scribbled a message on his knee-pad that said “Downed American Pilot. Your area.” and he dropped it over a friendly South Korean post nearby.

William landed in some trees and soon heard a few shots, the patrol was heading towards him, but luckily, he was able to outrun them. After about an hour of running, he heard voices, then he could hear footsteps coming towards him. He saw a narrow ditch, dove into it, and pulled brush over himself for camouflage. He listened closely and felt that there may be four or five men closing in on him. He had his pistol, but it would be tough to fight his way out of this one. If they didn’t see him, maybe he could stay hidden until dark, then start moving again. As he lay there, he could hear the men getting closer. Now he could see their faces above him. He put the revolver back and grabbed his knife. He was going to lunge for their throats. As he looked through the branches, he realized there were 6 men, and they had their guns pointed down at him.

William busted out laughing. He could finally see the emblems on their helmets, they were South Koreans. He shouted, “friends!” and they reached down to help him up. He went from thinking he would be fighting for his life, to standing at Republic of Korea, in his boxer shorts, drinking a beer, and getting his cuts and bruises treated by medical.

A high ranking Marine Corps officer strode in, and told William he did an amazing job on his mission, and he was being recommended for something big. He couldn’t wait to find out more, but a few weeks later, he received some bad news. During his September 5th mission, when he bailed out of the plane, he injured his back. At first, it was pretty sore, and he didn’t think too much of it, but a few weeks later, he was having trouble getting out of bed, so he was sent to the hospital. Once he was discharged, he was thrilled to still be in Korea when Squadron 212 was ordered aboard the carrier Rendova (Ren-doh-va) in October of 1951. He received a Gold Star in lieu of the second Distinguished Flying Cross.

By that December, William had made a mistake that got him severely injured. He and a few other men were supposed to drop bombs to destroy bridges because the bridges at Toko-Ri were vital to the enemy’s supply route. After successfully knocking the bridges down, the men were called in by the intelligence officer who said, the bridges were fully intact. They were shown an aerial photograph and sure as shit, the bridge was there and trucks were moving across it. How could that be possible? The men had seen the bridge fall into the water after being bombed. They were certain it had been destroyed a couple days before. The men flew over the bridge to take a look, and they were shocked to see that it was intact and looked like it had never been touched. How could they rebuild that fast?

William flew down to an unusually low altitude to look closer and within seconds, a storm of shrapnel was raining down. He was hit multiple times, from every angle, and his plane flipped on its back, he lost control. His right leg was burning, and he put hard right pressure on his control stick, then went into a snap roll, nosed over, added full power to pick up speed, and zigzagged out of there. Once he had the plane under control, he put his hand on his right leg and felt something warm. He looked down and saw blood pouring through a hole in his flight suit. The right wing of the plane was damaged, and there were several holes in the cockpit.

He couldn’t just land. He was still in enemy territory and would need to travel about 100 miles to get to safety. He didn’t have that kind of time though, he felt his leg getting stiff, and he knew he couldn’t use it in a landing. He felt weak and dizzy, he was worried he would pass out, but he called to his men and asked them to lead him back to the ship. He made it back to the ship and got immediate care, along with some amazing news. He was going to assume command of the squadron. This was a dream come true for William.

The next morning, he saw his dream slipping away. His leg, from the hip joint to the knee, had swelled more than twice its normal size, and it turned black and blue. He had to go back to the States for surgery. He didn’t take command of a Squadron as soon as he went back in, he was assigned to other projects first, but in June of 1955, he took command of Squadron 121. The Squadron already had a reputation, and it wasn’t necessarily a good one, but William was determined to turn things around, and he was excited about the challenge. His team began setting records, receiving awards, and they got some publicity in the local press as well. In the spring of 1956, it was time for rotation and reassignment.

INCIDENT

William arranged to fly with Lt. Herbert Nolan from Beaufort (Bew-fert) to the Naval Air Station at South Weymouth (Way-mouth), Massachusetts, and return, in the F8U Crusader. It was about 800 miles either way, and round trip could easily be done in half a day. When they landed at South Weymouth, Herb felt that something was wrong with his radio, and he wanted it fixed before they returned to Beaufort. The radio in an F8U is very complex, and typically, if the radio has an issue, they have to remove it and install a new one. South Weymouth didn’t have any radios in stock, but William had them input an order to get the part overnight, and it’s a damn good thing he did. You see, Herb would need that radio to find out that William was in trouble. On Sunday, July 26th, 1959, Herb and WIlliam left the field at 3:30, and got dressed in their flight suits. William typically wore a bright orange suit that was much thicker, but it was at the cleaners, so, he put on a blue summer-weight suit.

They filed the standard forms that included their flight plans, names, ranks, type of aircraft to be flown, number of aircraft in the flight, route and altitude, estimated time of arrival, and whether the flight would be IFR (Instrument-flight rules) or VFR (visual). Under IFR, you are not allowed to deviate from your assigned altitude and route without permission, and the military authorities can keep an eye on the planes at all times. The control tower would be able to provide an approximate time of arrival.

That morning, the weather looked good, so they chose to file VFR (visual). William went into the office to get the weather updates and he was told that the weather is good at Boston, good at Beaufort. There may be a few scattered clouds over Beaufort, and there could be some thunderstorm activity along the way. There was some considerable thunderstorm activity in the vicinity of Norfolk. The tops of the storm clouds were reported at 30k to 40k feet.

William said he had no problem going to 50k feet if necessary. The weather was strictly isolated thunderstorm variety, so he could fly over the top of the storm. The two of them were ready for takeoff, and everything went smoothly. Over New York, the weather was immaculate, no clouds in the sky. Once they were over Atlantic City, the sky turned a bit hazy and there were some scattered and broken clouds. As they were over Norfolk, Virginia, there were dark, massive, rolling clouds of a thunderstorm. It was a few minutes before 6 PM and they would be touching down in Beaufort in about a half hour.

The storm appeared to be slightly higher than the 40k foot maximum the aerologist told them. William radioed to Herb and told him they should start an easy climb to make sure they were over the tops. You should always fly above a storm, not through it. The turbulence is very violent, and you can lose control of the plane.

As William started the climb, he noticed that he was passing through the thin, wispy tops of the storm at 45,000 feet, so he kept climbing. At 48k feet, he was well over the tops, so he levelled off. They were just passing over the Norfolk Tacan (Tack-in), which is an electronic navigation check point. As William checked his navigation frequency, he noticed that he was slowing down a bit, so he tried to slightly pick up speed. He was feeling relaxed, not too long left in his flight, but he was easing into a cruise climb again, he had dropped back to 44k feet and he could see the tops of the clouds ahead.

Alright, he would have to go back up to 48k feet. Just as he was passing the 47k foot mark, he heard a thump and a rumble sound under him. He looked down at the instruments and everything appeared to be fine, but he knew something was wrong. He heard the sound again and the fire warning light flashed on. This could mean that there really was a fire, or something was hot in the electronic sensing system. So, there’s either a fire now, or there will be a fire soon. The fire light usually means you better eject.

He cut back on the power and called Herb to say there was a problem with his engine. When he cut back on the power, the fire light went out. What a relief, but it only lasted a brief moment. His rpm indicator started to unwind rapidly. It went from 90% to 0 in a few seconds. He had no engine, no power, and that meant, no radio. He could no longer communicate with Herb. William reached over to the left side of the cockpit and grabbed a small T-shaped handle and pulled to release the auxiliary package, but nothing happened. He needed his emergency power package, so he pulled again, this time, much harder, but the handle came completely out of the wall. There was nothing he could do. He couldn’t even dive to a lower, safer level for ejection.

He knew he had to bail and fast. If he waited too long in the plane, it could stall and fall into a wild spin, or it could go down at a supersonic speed. Herb was trying to contact William and when he couldn’t reach him, he called the Norfolk control center to report the emergency. William knew he had to eject, there was no other choice, but he had never heard of anyone having ejected at this altitude. The temperature outside was close to 70 below zero, and he only had the damn summer-weight flying suit, some gloves, a helmet, and Marine field shoes.

Even if he could survive the frostbite, what about the decompression? Or the thunderstorm below him? It seemed like he had been thinking for hours, but in reality, he had 20 seconds to make a decision. He glanced at the instruments one last time, that’s it, time to Eject. He positioned his body on the front seat, feet firmly on the deck, back straight, shoulders squared, he tugged on his torso harness for reassurance, he was ready. William reached up, gripped the ejection seat handles and pulled hard. He was expecting a tremendous blast of air as the canopy tore away, but he didn’t feel anything. The curtain didn’t even pause at the point where he’d have to reach back for the lever that would by-pass the canopy arming mechanism. With the curtain coming down smoothly, he wasn’t going to stop. Then he heard and felt the ejection seat fire. He was shot up and out of the plane and he felt a strange, ripping sensation, as if part of his body or suit had been caught on a jagged edge of something solid and was being dragged through a row of sharp, uneven teeth. He didn’t know what this meant at the time, but would later learn that he had little stab wounds in his shoulders, so he believes he went through the canopy.

He was hit with the expected blast of air, and the ejection curtain was ripped from his hands. His body was freezing, and in tons of pain. His first thoughts were there was no way he was surviving this one. His body was in complete shock. He had gone from 75 degrees Fahrenheit in the cockpit to almost negative 70 degrees. Instantly, all exposed parts of his body were stinging. His face, neck, wrists, hands, and ankles just felt like they were on fire, then his body began going numb. The pain of decompression was unbearable. In the book, William says he could feel his abdomen distending and stretching until he thought he would burst. He felt like his eyes were being ripped from their sockets, his head was splitting apart, his ears were bursting inside, and he had cramps all over his body.

Here’s a quote from an article called HEROES: The Nightmare Fall in TIMES magazine

“I had a terrible feeling like my abdomen was bloated twice its size. My nose seemed to explode. For 30 seconds I thought the decompression had me. It was shocking cold all over. My ankles and wrists began to burn as though somebody had put Dry Ice on my skin. My left hand went numb. I had lost that glove when I went out.”

He fell to the level of the clouds and could see rotating colors as he was spinning. It was hard to focus on the things happening around him when it felt like his body was going to bust. He looked down and saw his stomach was huge and swollen. When he got to the soft white tops of the clouds, he suddenly realized that he was conscious! Maybe he did have a shot at surviving this. The force was so great that he couldn’t move his hands or legs as he was spinning around. It took some effort to realize that the sharp pain on his face was from his oxygen mask slapping against him repeatedly. He knew he had to get that mask on, but he couldn’t pull his arms in. He entered what appeared to be a dense overcast of grey and white clouds and he was finally able to pull his arms in.

Now that he was in the denser atmosphere, the pressure was easing up slightly, so he was able to get the oxygen mask on. As he held the mask in place, he could feel something on his face and neck. He touched his face and realized he was covered in blood, but he didn’t know where it was coming from. It’s probably good that he didn’t know where it was coming from right then. He later learned that he was bleeding from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. This was due to ruptures caused by the decompression. As he was tumbling, he lost his other glove, so his both hands went numb. He was trying to calculate how far he had fallen becuase he needed to know when to pull the chute. He knew the calculations weren’t precise, so he would have to rely on the automatic chute opener.

“It seemed like I free-fell for an eternity. All this time I had this keen desire to pull the ripcord. I had to keep telling myself, ‘If you do, you’ll slow down and freeze to death or die from lack of oxygen.’ Just as I was considering pulling the cord, I felt a shock. I looked up to see the chute. All I could see was cloud. But I could tell form pulling on the risers that I had a good chute.”

He felt as if little rocks were hitting his body. He was inside a thunderstorm. He was either being pelted by hail or drops of rain. He waited as long as he could and he decided to pull the D-ring to open the chute. He saw his finger danling, apparently he had cut it deep, He was either seeing a tendon or a bone.

Immediately after opening the chute, William said that the turbulence felt stronger, and it was a violent churning. He felt like he had been suddenly taken up in an elevator, two or three rapid rides in succession. The rides were brief, but speedy, and ended suddenly, with a feeling of weightlessness. When the “updrafts” increased in frequency and strength, he knew it was the turbulence of the storm, the massive blasts of air. After the first few shocks of turbulence, he felt queasy. He had thousands of hours in the air, in all sorts of planes, and weather conditions, and he had never had motion sickness before. This was unlike anything he could have ever trained for though.

WHen William was hit with the shocks, it would hit like a tidal wave of air. He would get hit with a massive blast, and he said it felt like every bone in his body was rattling as it shot his body up and up and up. As he came back down again, he would see the clouds, black, gray, and white. He was trapped in the storm. Over and over, he was shot back up in the sky, tumbling, and spinning, only to drop back down into the storm and do it all over again. It was extremely painful as he was being slammed around and he couldn’t stop it.

At one point, he felt his body being squeezed like an accordion. He was swinging back and forth from his parachute, like a pendulum, but it was in a violent manner. He could feel the blood rushing back and forth between his feet and his head. It was hard not to let the negative thoughts creep in. There was no way out of this. It would be such a shame if they found his battered body and he wasn’t able to tell them what happened. He thought, “This punishment is overwhelming. I’ll never survive. No one could survive it. What supreme irony to come out alive from “explosive” decompression, to maintain consciousness all the way down, only to be battered to death by a thunderstorm. When they find my body, they’ll never know how I died. The pathologist might say that I died of shock, or that “explosive” decompression had been too much for my heart. What a pity I shall not be there to say, “No, no, no. The explosive decompression was bad, painful. But it did not kill me. The frostbite was agony, but it did not kill me. It was the raging storm that tore the life from me.”

He decided to cling to hope and felt that he could become part of the storm’s pattern. The blasts of air shot him up, then he came back down, but it wasn’t always straight down. Some of the air would spill over the top of each rising current, out and then down, it was the shape of a broad mushroom. William held onto hope that he might spill over with the air eventually. If that happened, he would be released from the vortex and he could float down.

Unfortunately, the storm had more to do. Soon, he wasn’t just dealing with the clouds, but thunder, lightning, hail, and rain were added to the mix. The first clap of thunder was a deafening explosion, followed by a blinding flash of lightning, then everything vibrated. After that first clap, the thunder and lightning were continuous. Every clap of thunder would vibrate through William. He felt that if he hadn’t had his helmet with very tight cushioning over his ears, it probably would have blown his eardrums out.

He watched as the lightning jumped from one part of the clouds to another, like spark-plugs firing in the dark. He was already shocked that his parachute hadn’t given out yet, but now he was worried it would be struck by lightning. He certainly didn’t know it at the time, but the storm William was in, was one of the most violent to ever be recorded on the East Coast. “I’d see lightning. Boy, do I remember that lightning. I never exactly heard the thunder, I felt it. I remember falling through hail, and that worried me; I was afraid the hail would tear the chute. Sometimes I was falling through heavy water-I'd take a breath and breathe in a mouthful of water. Sometimes I had the sensation I was looping the chute. I was blown up and down as much as 6,000 feet at a time. It went on for a long time, like being on a very fast elevator, with strong blasts of compressed air hitting you.”

At one point, he was looking up at his chute, and a bolt of lightning struck, illuminating the interior of the chute’s billow. In his mind, it looked like the white-domed cathedral, and he believed he was in a softly lit church, he thought he died. Rain began falling in sheets and he felt as if he might drown in the air. There were times where he was actually gasping for air. He kept having to hold his breath and he thought, “How silly. They’re going to find you hanging from some tree, in your parachute harness, limp, lifeless, your lungs filled with water, wondering how on earth did you drown!”

When the hail began, I’m sure you can imagine how bad that’s going to be, he felt as if he was getting hit with hammers all over his body. They were pelting him so fast that he couldn’t even see them, so he had no idea how big they really were. He kept trying to focus his mind and think about how he would handle things when he landed. He realized that the air was getting smoother, and the rain was gentler. He saw a flash of green, he was going to land. It was getting dark, but he started looking for any signs of civilization, he was so exhausted, and badly wounded, but there was no time for that.

He felt that he was speeding over the trees at 30 to 50 MPH and a Navy aerologist recorded the wind in that area at 35 to 40 knots on the ground. He was zooming so fast that he was going to crash into the treetops, he was prepared for a very violent landing. The chute caught a tree, and he was swinging back and forth, before dropping to the ground. He just lay on the ground, stunned for several seconds. He lifted his legs and arms to make sure he wasn’t paralyzed. He just wanted to fall asleep right there, but he couldn’t. He looked at his watch, it was 6:40 PM. His descent should have taken him 10 minutes once he ejected, but it took him 40.

He started walking down the road and he could see cars, so he tried to get a car to stop, he knew he needed to get to the hospital. There he was, in the rain, in a tattered flight suit, swollen face, blood all over his body, holding a knife. Several cars went by him, and his body was giving out. He frantically waved his hands as a car went by, and it passed him. He tried to run along the side of the road, stumbled, and got up to run again. He fell to his knees and saw the car hit the brakes and come back. The driver rolled the window down.

William spoke firmly and told the man he needed to get to the hospital, he motioned for him to get in. As he opened the door, the dome light popped on and there were four young boys in the back and a woman in the front. The driver said he was Judson Dunning, a farmer and his wife was a schoolteacher. Three of the boys were there's and the fourth boy was a cousin. They didn’t have enough gas to get William to the hospital, but they promised to take him to a spot where he could call for help.

William later learned that Mr. Dunning and his sons were able to backtrack William’s path out of the woods, and they recovered his parachute and survival pack. They took it home and spread everything out to invite friends and neighbors to see the jet pilot’s museum, and they were going to hold everything until William came to collect his belongings.

So, they’re in the car, and William learned that he was in North Carolina. The family was taking him to a little town, Rich Square, where there was a private ambulance service that could get him to a hospital. When they arrived, they learned that the lines were down, they couldn’t call for help. William couldn’t take it anymore. He dropped to the ground and just laid on the floor of the store, he was too tired. Luckily, a state highway patrol officer was able to call for help, and they finally got him to the hospital.

The doctor was astonished when he was looking at Williams’s unique wounds. During decompression, his body had swelled so much and pressed so tightly against the seams of his flight suit, that the seams had made marks all over his skin. As he was just about to fall asleep that night, he shot up and cried, the airplane! He needed to know what happened to the plane, it could harm people when it finally hit the earth. Within minutes, he learned that the highway patrolman called the hospital to say they found the plane and no one was hurt. Several witnesses saw it crash in a wooded area near Scotland Neck, North Carolina. There wasn’t much left to it, the plane had almost vaporized.

For several weeks after William rode thunder, he lost his balance if he closed his eyes and he was very unstable when his eyes were open. He had to look at lines on the ground, or look for the corners of walls. He also had mild retrograde amnesia, which affected his memory for events, places and persons known to him within the three months preceding the emergency ejection. Even though he was having trouble with his memory, he didn’t forget the details about the airplane.

When all the accident data had been analyzed, the experts and factory engineers all agreed that the engine had seized. Even though the plane had vaporized on impact, there were a few small parts found in and around the crater. One was part of the engine driven fuel pump. The teeth of the pump drive gear had been driven forward to make a perfect imprint on the face of the driver bearing. The engine experts concluded that the engine wasn’t turning on impact and had seized. After the analysis, it was determined that William made all the correct decisions in the 20 seconds that he had.

Everyone began referring to him as a hero and he insisted he was an unwilling hero, he was just responding to a situation based on his training. A pshyciatrist asked how he felt about flying again. He said, “Doctor, I have no fears, no apprehensions whatsoever. I am in fact, looking forward eagerly to flying jets again. Of course, I’d like to know myself what difficulties I might encounter physically. But I have no fears about it.” He was found to be physically and mentally fit, he could be returned to duty.

The last test he had to complete was a pressure chamber test. They check to see how a person reacts when they’re subjected to all the discomforts of extremely thin air in a simulated high-altitude flight. The chamber is a small, square steel cube witha large airtight, steel door at one end and a thick window at the other end. Oxygen masks are hanging form the ceiling just in case. A balloon inflates and deflates according to the pressure in the chamber, it allows the pilots to visually see what’s happening to their organs before and after decompression.

Compared to the actual decompression William had gone through, this was painless. He passed the test with ease and was cleared to fly again. He didn’t waste any time. The following day, he arranged for a pilot to go with him in a two-seater jet trainer and once he knew he was ready, he went up in an F8U. He was back in the air where he belonged.

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