1972, January 26 - The media reported on the explosion of a Yugoslav passenger plane Douglas DC-9, which was en route from Copenhagen to Zagreb. It happened over the Czech city of Serbska-Kamenice at an altitude of 10 160 meters. The cause of the explosion was a bomb hidden aboard the plane by the Croatian Ustasha terrorists. The chance of survival in such disasters is negligible, and as a rule, reports about them end in the same way: "Everyone on board died."
However, this time a sensation swept the world - 22-year-old flight attendant Vesna Vulovich, having fallen from a height of 10,000 meters, survived. A comparatively "soft" planting was "provided" by snow-covered tree crowns, which softened the blow. Although, the girl came to herself only a month later.
Vesna Vulovich became a flight attendant by accident. After graduating from high school, she went to university. Like many young people of that time, the girl was fascinated by the songs of the Beatles and, in order to understand her idols, went to study at the English department. After the first course, Vesna was sent for an internship in England. And upon her return, there was a meeting that abruptly changed her life.
One school friend Vesna, who had become a pilot by that time, flew on the planes of the Yugoslav company JAT. It was he who advised the girl to master the specialty of an international airline stewardess, so that once a month she could visit the capital of England so beloved by her. And financially, such work was a good help for the student. 1971 - Spring rose to the sky for the first time …
1972, January 25 - the crew, in which Vulovich trained, arrived in Copenhagen, where he was supposed to change the pilots who had brought the airliner from Stockholm. As Vesna later recalled, she had the impression that her more experienced colleagues seemed to have a presentiment of something - they talked a lot about their families, bought souvenirs.
Shortly before takeoff, Vesna Vulovich drew attention to one worker who was loading luggage onto the plane. Outwardly, he looked like a native of the Balkan Peninsula, and his behavior was in sharp contrast to the work of other loaders - he fussed, talked loudly. The girl believes that it was he who planted the bomb on the plane. However, this thought came much later - when she woke up in the hospital.
Vulovich was lucky not only in the fact that the airliner fell on snow-covered trees, but also in the fact that one of the local residents, who worked in a German field hospital during the Second World War and knew how to provide first aid, was the first to be at the scene of the accident.
It was he who found the barely breathing stewardess among the dead bodies of passengers and helped her. Apparently, this saved the girl's life. But for a long time the doctors could not believe that she would survive. Even when Vulovic came to her senses, they doubted it. But the days passed, and the young body was more and more confident to cope with the injuries.
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Two months after the accident, the girl was sent by plane from Prague to Belgrade. There were fears that the flight could negatively affect the mental state of Vulovich - nevertheless, a fall from such a height could not pass without a trace. Fortunately, everything turned out well - the girl did not remember anything from the events of that terrible day and therefore did not react to the new flight. She was not afraid to fly afterwards.
In a Belgrade hospital, a policeman was on duty at the entrance to her ward all the time - the authorities feared that Croatian terrorists would try to deal with a dangerous witness: Vesna Vulovic was the only one who saw the alleged perpetrator and gave his description. By the way, it is still unknown whether they could arrest him or not - the miraculous salvation overshadowed all other details of that catastrophe. This case was even listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the highest jump without a parachute.
An interesting detail. When the girl arrived in London for the ceremony of presenting the certificate of entry into the Book of Records, at the same time Paul McCartney, the idol of her youth, received a similar document.
1972 September - Spring was discharged from the hospital. She was banned from flying, but she continued to work for the JAT airline - she was engaged in the execution of cargo contracts. Vesna Vulovic left her workplace 18 years later due to disagreement with the policies of the then Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.
1977 - Vulovich got married and lived happily in marriage for 15 years. Then, as she herself said, she also “happily” divorced. It's just that Spring could not acquire children.
Airplane crash survivors - the most famous cases
Vesna Vulovic is far from the only one who was able to survive a fall from a great height. In total, there are several dozen such people around the world, not counting those who survived accidents during takeoff and landing of aircraft. Here is a short list of the most famous facts, most of which occurred during the Second World War.
• 1942 - a Soviet Il-4 bomber was shot down in an air battle. The navigator of the crew, Ivan Chisov, left the plane at an altitude of more than 7,000 meters. The parachute opened as it should, but found itself in the path of the burning car … Then Chisov fell without a parachute. He was saved by a thick snow cover and a slope of a deep ravine, where the lucky one slipped at an acute angle.
• 1943, May - British bomber "Ventura" was shot down over Holland. The car fell apart, and its debris rushed down. The tail section of the aircraft, where the gunner William Stannard was, received minor damage, very successfully got into the air stream and made an almost "soft" landing. The pilot escaped with bruises.
• In the same year, in November, during a raid on Bremen, an American B-17 bomber was hit by German anti-aircraft guns. The parachute of one of the crew members - Eugene Moran - was damaged, and he could not use it, so he fell down with the plane. The trees softened the blow. Moran was taken prisoner; He spent 4 months in German hospitals, but survived.
• 1944, March - during a raid on Germany, Nicholas Elquimade's English plane was shot down. The pilot's parachute did not open. The impact on the ground after falling from a height of more than 5000 meters was softened by a spruce and a snowdrift about half a meter thick. Surprisingly, there was no break, although the free fall speed was at least 150 km / h. This case received widespread publicity; in the military press Elkimade was not called anything other than a "surviving candidate for the dead".
• 1944, April - during another raid, a German Luftwaffe fighter destroyed an American B-24 bomber. Three pilots on board could not use parachutes and, together with the wreckage of the aircraft, fell from a height of more than 5000 meters. Two pilots died, but Merle Hasenfratz survived, having escaped with broken legs and a knocked out eye.
• At the same time, an American B-24 bomber was shot down over Austria. The damaged car went into a tailspin, which prevented two pilots, Gerald Duval and John Wells, from leaving the falling plane. The plane crashed to the ground from a height of more than 7,000 meters and completely collapsed. But both pilots survived, although they were seriously injured.
• The fall from an altitude of more than 8,000 meters for the American B-17 bomber Federico Gonzales, who was shot down in January 1945 over Dusseldorf, did not end so well. Having been wounded, he could not leave the burning plane and fell to the ground with it. Gonzales survived, but died a few days later in the hospital.
• 1945, February - two American B-17 bombers collided over Austria. The gunner of one of the aircraft, Erwin Kosienzarek, was blocked in the tail section, could not leave the car and fell with it from a height of more than 8,000 meters. The German soldiers were most amazed when Kosiensarek emerged from the rubble unharmed. Of course, he was immediately taken prisoner.
• Two more American B-17 bombers collided in the same month over Belgium. One of the pilots - Joe Jones - fell to the ground from a height of about 4,000 meters. He was seriously injured, was admitted to a field hospital, where he regained consciousness a few days later. He survived.
• 1945, spring - another American B-17 bomber was shot down during the raid on Koblenz. Shooter Edmund Shibble was unable to leave the plane and fell to the ground from a height of 7,000 meters. The accident ended with a spinal fracture for him. He survived, although he remained bedridden.
Peacetime disasters
• 1981, August 8 - An-24 passenger plane and Tu-16 bomber collided in the Far East. Only one survived - Larisa Savitskaya, who was returning that ill-fated day with her husband from a honeymoon trip. She was found three days later in the deep taiga with serious injuries. Larissa was treated for a long time, but the pain pursued for many years, and not so much physical as mental.
• 2002, October 31 - after falling from a height of 1,000 meters, fellow countryman Vulovich, 40-year-old paratrooper Dragan Kurcic, survived. He escaped with minor cut wounds, bruises and a couple of bruises. It was an ordinary jump for Kurcic. But the main parachute did not open. The attempt to open the spare also failed. The parachutes opened simultaneously a little later, their lines were messed up. What saved Kurcic was that he fell on the roof of one of the buildings and broke it; this softened the fall. Remarkably, the incident did not frighten Kurchich, and just 1 hour after the fall, he again took to the sky and jumped with a parachute.
• Survived a fall from a height of almost 9,000 meters and world famous British balloonist Steve Fossett. The balloon, in which the traveler flew over the Coral Sea, suddenly lost its tightness, deflated and began to fall down. The speed with which he hit the water surface was over 70 km / h. But Fossett escaped with only a slight fright. After some time, he became the first person to single-handedly travel around the world in a balloon.
N. Nepomniachtchi