William Rankin Rides Thunderstorm Cloud
In July 1959, U.S. Marine Corps pilot William Rankin bailed out of his F-8 Crusader supersonic fighter at about 47,000 feet over North Carolina after his engine failed and his cockpit explosively decompressed, giving him instant decompression sickness and freezing his skin in the minus 50 degree air. His parachute deployed early and dragged him into a towering cumulonimbus cloud, where he spent about 40 minutes being hurled up and down by violent updrafts, pelted by hail, blinded by lightning, and even feeling the shock of thunder in his body while his parachute repeatedly collapsed and reinflated.
Rankin alternated between choking on water and struggling to breathe in the thin, freezing air as the storm tossed him like debris. He finally dropped out of the cloud and crashed into a forest, badly bruised, frostbitten, and suffering from decompression sickness, but alive, later recounting the ordeal in his book βThe Man Who Rode the Thunder.β