So, after wrapping himself in his silk parachute, he began descending to the river below. Realizing that he had no idea where he was and no food or sleeping bag, he quickly decided that he must move or freeze to death-the temperature was 40 below zero and would only drop as night fell. He repeatedly called “Ho!” at the top of his lungs but the only response was silence. When Crane landed hip-deep in snow, he was suddenly very alone. He later recalled the blast of biting cold that struck his hands and face as he floated toward the ground and the “huge blob of red flame” when his plane struck the mountainside. Crane managed to don a parachute before leaping through the open bomb bay doors. Buffeted by high winds and crushing centrifugal forces, they sounded the alarm to abandon ship. Harold Hoskins struggled with the controls, they could not right the aircraft. Crane’s ordeal began as a routine test flight, but at 25,000 feet one of the plane’s four engines malfunctioned and the aircraft suddenly began to spiral out of control. Leon Crane managed to save his own life by parachuting to earth, his narrow escape from death landed him in an equally perilous situation-for the next 84 days he was alone in the wilderness in the middle of an Alaska winter. The airplane was a B-24 Liberator, a popular heavy bomber for Allied and American forces during World War II, and it carried a crew of five. On Decema high-altitude flight over the Alaskan interior ended in a fiery crash atop a mountain overlooking the Charley River inside what is today Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. I’d unwrap myself, fetch more wood, build up the fire, rewrap myself like a silkworm in a cocoon, and doze off again." NPS/Josh Spice "The cold woke me up almost every two hours. Flags left to honor the fallen at B-24 crash site.
0 kommentar(er)
