In March 1944, a British airman faced a horrific choice aboard a burning heavy bomber: burn to death inside the aircraft or jump into the freezing night sky over Germany with absolutely nothing to break his fall. Nicholas Stephen Alkemade, a 21-year-old Royal Air Force tail gunner, chose to jump. What followed remains one of the most statistically impossible survival events in military history. He plummeted 18,000 feet (5,490 meters) straight down without a parachute and lived to tell the tale.
Trapped in a Burning Bomber
On the night of March 24, Flight Sergeant Alkemade was manning the rear turret of an Avro Lancaster bomber returning from a massive 300-plane raid on Berlin. High above the German countryside, a Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88 night-fighter abruptly attacked from the darkness. The German pilot, Oberleutnant Heinz Rökker, landed a devastating strike. The Lancaster instantly caught fire and began spiraling out of control.
Trapped in the rear turret where there was no room to wear a parachute pack, Alkemade scrambled into the burning fuselage to retrieve his gear. Flames beat him back. When he finally reached his parachute, he found the fabric completely charred and useless. The aircraft was rapidly disintegrating at an altitude of 18,000 feet (5,490 meters). With his only lifeline destroyed, Alkemade made a grim calculation. Preferring a quick death on impact over burning alive, he threw himself into the void.
A Fall Through the Trees
Falling from 18,000 feet (5,490 meters) up, Alkemade rapidly reached terminal velocity. The freezing air rushed past him as he plummeted toward the snow-covered German landscape.
However, instead of hitting solid ground, he crashed directly through the canopy of a dense fir tree forest. The thick branches of the pine trees repeatedly broke his fall, decelerating his body in stages before he finally slammed into a deep snowbank on the forest floor. Hours later, Alkemade opened his eyes. He had suffered only a sprained leg, some cuts, and burns from the plane. He could move both his arms and legs.
Captured by the Gestapo
German civilians quickly found him in the snow. Upon capture, he was handed over to the Gestapo. The interrogators completely dismissed his story, refusing to believe any human could survive an 18,000-foot (5,490-meter) freefall with just a sprained ankle.
Alkemade insisted they investigate the Lancaster’s crash site. When German investigators examined the wreckage, they found his destroyed parachute right where he said it was, proving he had jumped without it. Astounded, the Germans actually issued Alkemade a signed certificate authenticating his impossible fall. He spent the remainder of the conflict in the Stalag Luft I prisoner-of-war camp before being repatriated to Britain in May 1945, closing the book on one of the most astonishing survival events of the Second World War.