A Man Fell Out of the Plane But Pilots Saved Him

When Marine Second Lieutenant Walter Osipoff was boarding a plane on May 15, 1941, he didn't know yet that the flight would almost become his very last. Shortly after the takeoff, an accident that no one could have predicted left the man dangling high in the air, tangled in his parachute and hanging from the aircraft's tail in midflight.

It was another regular sunny morning in California, and everything was calm at the North Island Naval airbase. There were no warning signs to the drama that was about to unfold in just a couple of hours. His parachute's ripcord got tangled with the automatic-release cord of the cargo cylinder, and the next thing he knew - his parachute was deploying inside the plane!