8. Equally Strange Was the Tale of Alan Magee, Who Fell 22,000 Feet Without a Parachute and Survived
Immediately after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Alan Eugene Magee (1919 – 2003) joined the United States Army Air Forces. He was trained in aerial gunnery, became a B-17 ball turret gunner, and was sent to the Eighth Air Force in Britain. He joined the crew of a Flying Fortress nicknamed Snap! Crackle! Pop! that was part of the 303rd Bomb Group’s 360th Bomb Squadron. Magee’s seventh mission, on January 3rd, 1943, was a daylight raid against Saint-Nazaire in France. It ended with him falling over 22,000 feet from his B-17, without a parachute.
While bombing U-boat pens, Alan Magee’s ball turret took a flak hit that made it inoperative. He got out of the turret, and discovered that the flak hit had also shredded his parachute. Before he had time to contemplate the implications, another flak hit destroyed the B-17’s right-wing, started an uncontrollable fire, and set the plane spinning towards earth. While crawling towards the plane’s front, Magee blacked out from lack of oxygen. Unconscious, he fell out of the burning bomber. As with the miraculously strange survival of Nicholas Alkemade, Alan Magee also lived to tell the tale.