Aircrew casualities

Guy Alcala wrote:

In planes with that seat, the parchute was hung on a hook on the
flight deck out of the pilot's reach. If a plane was spinning, or there was fire
on the flight deck, there was no way a pilot could get to his parachute. He could
squeeze out the pilot's window, but to no purpose without a chute. . . ."


This sounds reasonable of course...I've seen where Art says that
they always wore the harness and the chestpack chute but It seems
to me that it would be pretty inconvenient to get any work done
that way.

I've never flown during wartime but we used the harness and
chestpack on the Lancaster during ASW ops in peacetime. We always
wore the harness but never the chestpack, that sucker is big,
about 1.5 feet wide, 8 - 10 inches 'deep' and about 8 - 10 inches
'fore and aft'. It's heavy too, likely 25 pounds or so. I just
can't imagine moving around much with that thing dangling from
your chest for 6 - 8 hours...BUT...I wasn't there and war can do
funny things to one I'm sure.

I mean nothing derogatory by that either...it was just a
different time, one that I'm not familiar with. Thank God.
--

-Gord.

Subject: Aircrew casualities
From: "Gord Beaman" )
Date: 10/4/03 3:07 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

This sounds reasonable of course...I've seen where Art says that
they always wore the harness and the chestpack chute but It seems
to me that it would be pretty inconvenient to get any work done
that way.

Got work done fine. Never gave it a thought. But I would think long and hard
before snapping that chest pack off.

I've never flown during wartime but we used the harness and
chestpack on the Lancaster during ASW ops in peacetime. We always
wore the harness but never the chestpack, that sucker is big,
about 1.5 feet wide, 8 - 10 inches 'deep' and about 8 - 10 inches
'fore and aft'. It's heavy too, likely 25 pounds or so. I just
can't imagine moving around much with that thing dangling from
your chest for 6 - 8 hours...BUT...I wasn't there and war can do
funny things to one I'm sure.

I mean nothing derogatory by that either...it was just a
different time, one that I'm not familiar with. Thank God.
--

-Gord.


We could take a direct hit from flak any second and our escape time could be
counted in nanoseconds. We all flew with out chutes on. And harnesses strapped
tight. Very tight. Go to my website and see the photo, "One went down". That
says it all when it comes to chutes.



Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer