ANSWER
Vesna Vulovic of Yugoslavia was a flight attendant aboard a DC-9 flying over Czechoslovakia on January 26th, 1972. The plane exploded, the result of a terrorist bombing, at a height of 33,000 feet. She fell in a section of the wreckage which landed on a snow-covered mountain slope. She was the only survivor. Although badly injured, she recovered fully and returned to work for the airline. To this day she has no memory of the incident, and still enjoys flying.
The greatest fall without "riding" a piece of wreckage goes to Russian Lt. I.M. Chisov, who bailed out of his Ilyushin 4 bomber at 22,000 feet in January 1942, after being attacked by German fighters. His plan was to free-fall to 1,000 feet before opening his parachute, thus limiting his exposure to enemy fire while still in the air. Unfortunately he lost consciousness on the way down, and never opened his parachute. Like Vulovic, he landed in snow and survived, returning to duty three months later.
There are a handful of accounts of others falling from great heights without a parachute and surviving. Here are two of the more interesting ones...
First there's the story of First Lt. Cliff Judkins, whose F-8 Crusader erupted in flames after a routine in-flight refueling maneuver . At 15,000 feet he attempted to eject, but his ejection seat failed. Having no other choice he became first person to manually bail out of an F-8 and survive. Once he was clear of the plane, which was now a fireball heading straight into the ocean, he pulled his ripcord. Unfortunately, his parachute failed to deploy properly, and he went streaming into the ocean himself, hitting the water at an estimated 110 miles per hour. He survived, and after a six month hospital stay, returned to flying F-8's.
Then there's the case of Flight Sergeant Nicholas Alkemade, a RAF tail gunner aboard a Lancaster bomber during World War II. When his plane was hit by enemy fire and burst into flame at 18,000 feet, he was unable to retrieve his parachute. Faced with the choice of being burned alive, and bailing without a parachute, he chose to jump. He landed in a dense forest of fir trees, the limbs of which broke his fall, before he finally came to rest in a deep snowdrift. His only injury was a twisted ankle. When he came to and saw stars overhead, he leaned back, lit a cigarette, and being unable to walk, waited to be rescued. He was in enemy territory and it was only a short time before he was found by a German patrol. He had great difficulty convincing the Germans of how he came to be there without a parachute.
In case you were wondering, terminal velocity for a human body in free-fall is roughly 120-125 miles per hour. However that is not the dangerous part... it's that sudden deceleration to 0 miles per hour at the end that does most people in.
WHO GOT IT RIGHT: John Judge, Bob Milligan, Marc Quinlivan, and John T.
