Flying fixed wing and rotor wing aircraft (Airplanes and Helicopters), traveling, photography, ...
| View | Add Favorite
| View | Add Favorite
I'd like to meet:
Chuck Yeager
Movies:
The Spin
Add to My Profile | More Videos
Books:
Yeager: An Autobiography, excerpt from "Flyboys": "Marine pilot Phil Vonville found himself in a deep hole after a strike over Japan.Phil's nightmare began as he regained consciousness nine thousand feet over the Pacific with his plane headed straight down. "I always thought I was indestructible and that nothing could happen to me," he told me. "Then in a blink of an eye a shell hit me." The shell blew Phil's right kneecap off, and a piece of shrapnel embedded in his right temple."There was a chunk of metal sticking out of my head," Phil told me. "Blood was oozing down my face, I had a hell of a headache, my leg hurt like crazy, there was blood everywhere, my airplane had a big hole in it, but all I could think was 'sharks.' That scared me more than anything."In a desperate attempt to stay airborne, Vonville jettisoned his ammunition to lighten his plane. "My right foot was in a pool of my own blood," he remembered. "I was going into shock from loss of blood. I took my belt off my coveralls, wrapped it around my thigh as a tourniquet. I put the end of the belt in my mouth and stuck a knife in the belt to hold it. All the while I'm flying an airplane.""I called the ship," Phil said. "They said 'Ditch.' I'm thinking sharks. I said, 'Negative!'"With his fuel gauge on empty, he rode the water for lift. "There's a slight breeze just above the water because of the wave action," he explained. That breeze was enough: His engine quit just as he coaxed his plane over the back of the USS Bennington ("They said I cleared it by only six feet"), where he made a belly landing and immediately lost consciousness."
