At the beginning of the century, when the Russian pilot Artseulov had not yet demonstrated the possibility of getting out of a tailspin, the plane that got into it was considered doomed. One of the pilots, who experienced such an unpleasant situation, unfastened his seat belts and, after waiting for the device to turn upside down, slipped out of the cockpit. The mixing of the center of gravity led to the exit of the apparatus from the spin. Having completed the orbit and entered a horizontal flight, the plane rushed towards the pilot who had left it and "caught" him, "sitting" in the cockpit! Having regained consciousness, the pilot took control levers and landed safely.
The French attempted to cross the La Manche by air. Of course, there were men at the wheel of the airplanes, but the French women decided not to lag behind. Edith Durand, the wife of the pilot Henri Durand, persuaded him to do this reckless act.
And so the airplanes of the spouses rise into the air and head towards the coast (Henry, naturally, undertook to accompany his wife to the very finish on the English coast). When both airplanes gained sufficient height, Edith's engine suddenly began to run up, and then completely stalled. Edith looked around helplessly at her husband and saw that he was ordering her to jump with a parachute. Which she did immediately.
With her weight, the woman balanced the engine in the nose, but now the centering was broken, and the plane went down even steeper. But due to the aerodynamic pressure, its propeller began to untwist, and the engine, which apparently had an airlock in the carburetor, started working again. The airplane leveled off and then began to climb rapidly. But Henri did not see this anymore, as he watched his wife landing on a parachute, at the same time choosing a landing site for his plane.
Meanwhile, the plane abandoned by his wife crossed the strait, went deep into the territory of Britain and fell into the well-kept park of some English aristocrat. This last stage of the journey was recorded by the assembled journalists.
The Great Patriotic War. A partisan detachment in the Bryansk forests sends an alarming radiogram to the mainland: the ammunition is running out, and the squad is cut off from the front line by the punitive. The headquarters reacted immediately, and Alexei Shevtsov, a former fighter pilot, took off his patched-up "duck" ("U-2" trainer aircraft) into the air.
Aleksey went to the partisan "airfield" exactly and was about to make a U-turn to land against the wind, but the "duck" suddenly fell into an air hole, it was thoroughly shaken and at the same time control refused! The plane flew in a straight line, inexorably approaching the territory occupied by the Germans.
Cursing the capricious technique, Alexei fell out of the plane, almost immediately pulling out the parachute ring. He landed quite successfully and moved towards the "airfield" that was far behind.
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And suddenly, a few minutes later, he heard the familiar roar of the engine, and looking up, he was dumbfounded: right above his head, almost touching the tops of the trees with its wheels, it flew its own "duck", which, by unknown means, turned back.
And in the detachment, meanwhile, they wondered where the plane that had just flown over their heads had gone, showing by swinging its wings that he had noticed them. The agonizing minutes passed, and finally the roar of the engine was heard. Only the plane was flying in a strange way - very low and directly over the runway. Having almost reached its middle, the engine suddenly turned off, the "duck" sharply pecked its nose … and went to land! "What does he do, idiot, because he will break!" Gasped one of the partisans. Caught up in a tailwind, the plane slipped almost two-thirds of the runway and only then roughly hit the ground with its wheels, jumped and rolled straight onto the bush left at the end of the runway, into which it crashed with a terrible grinding and crackling.
When the partisans ran up to the plane huddled in the bushes, their hair stood on end: there was no pilot in the cockpit! There was no time to puzzle over this devilry, and by order of the commander, everyone rushed to unload the long-awaited cargo.
The exhausted pilot reached the forward post only two hours later. In what he was told, he refused to believe until he himself saw the "duck" firmly entrenched in the bush. According to peacetime norms, the plane could not be repaired, but it was wartime, and in two days the partisan craftsmen patched it up and at the same time hewed out a new propeller from birch with axes.
An equally incredible incident occurred on July 4, 1989 with the MiG-23 supersonic aircraft. During the training flight, the pilot N. Ye. Skuridin felt a pop and a sharp drop in engine thrust. Deciding that he was out of order, the pilot ejected. However, having got rid of the man, the MiG continued its flight, crossed several state borders and air defense lines, until it fell on the territory of Belgium.
How could it happen that an unguided jet plane could fly more than nine hundred kilometers, there is still no answer. This is possible if the plane was equipped with an autopilot, but they were not on the MiG-23 type aircraft. In any case, this incident is unique in the history of modern jet aircraft.
Author: N. Nepomniachtchi "Encyclopedia of the Mysterious and the Unknown"