by Jim Bates

The following account is based on personal conversations with a highly experienced test pilot who, in his long careen had flown over 100 types of aircraft ranging from small single-engine general aviation planes to the nation's most advanced jet fighter planes to the huge S-engine B-52 long-range bombers. Paul Berk, veteran aviator with over 10,000 hours of flying time, most of it "wringing out" aircraft gave the manuscript a "reality check."

Test pilot Paul Berk's first emergency bailout was in 1943, from a fiery F6F fighter being tested before return to the U.S. Navy after engine overhaul by Pratt and Whitney Aircraft (now a division of United Technologies) in East Hartford, Connecticut. His second emergency jump happened eight years later - in 1951, again over Connecticut - after numerous other test flights in the intervening years, tests of many and varied aircraft, including genuine forced landing predicaments (not simply practice "emergencies" to simulate something or other gone wrong). Fortunately, all the forced landings ended well.

The second bailout was not the extremely harrowing adventure the first had been, but neither was it without several bewildering seconds for the now experienced parachutist.

In 1943, Paul Berk, a twenty-six-year-old Pratt & Whitney test pilot, was flying a Grumman F6F-3 Navy fighter, making high-speed runs over southern New England to test maximum fuel temperature operating limits for various conditions.

With the throttle to the firewall on a hundred-fifty-mile course between Boston, Massachusetts - staying short of the densely populated city - and rural Mount Kisco, New York, Berk roared into his second high-speed turn over the small eastern New York town and headed for Boston again. From 28,000 feet, the wide Hudson River looked like a small stream. The air was so clear he could see Hartford, Connecticut in the distance. He made notations on the data board strapped to his right thigh.

Seconds later the R-2800-10 engine quit momentarily, then ran smoothly again. Berk quickly and anxiously scanned the instruments.

WHUMP! A loud noise sounded outside the plane, from up ahead.

Perk could see a large hole on the top right part of the engine cowling, and there were high- pitched rattling engine sounds, then flames. Hot oil spattered the windshield. It poured from the cowling hole, thickly smearing the canopy, obstructing Berk's vision. Smoke poured through the firewall into the cockpit, shutting out the bright sun.

Berk had never needed to make a parachute jump, but he knew he had no time now for pondering whether he had a choice. Flashes of worries punched his mind. He thought how little he knew about a parachute. A long time ago someone had said, "Here ! Put it over your shoulders like a jacket - fasten the chest and leg snaps, then tighten the straps. If you have to use it, dive over the side and pull the ripcord!"

He wondered if there would be enough oxygen in the bail-out bottle stowed in the leg pocket of his flight suit to last him from his 28,000-foot altitude until he descended to ten or twelve thousand feet. He remembered his high altitude chamber physiological training session. He remembered another young pilot there who volunteered for a demonstration and was unconscious in seconds after a chamber attendant removed the volunteer's mask at the simulated altitude of 30,000 feet.

Berk hastily probed the thick smoke for the fuel shut-off control. His bare hand was licked by bright flames. He plunged his hand into the fire, groping for the fuel handle. Flame shot back from the firewall, raging at Berk's other hand gripping the joystick, flaring at his face.

He couldn't get to the fuel shut-off handle. Instead, he used his badly burned hand to tug at the canopy release, committing himself to getting out of plane before becoming trapped. There was no time to first slow the plane's high speed. Fast-moving air swirled the thick smoke in the cockpit when the canopy slid back. Berk released fittings on seat and shoulder belts. The sound of the thundering, swirling airstream made him think he might not be able to escape and he worked harder.

He rolled the fighter sharply upside down, clenched the parachute ripcord handle with his right hand, then let himself fall from the cockpit. The several-hundred-mile-an-hour airflow smashed at his body, snapping his head and arms and legs about. His limbs struck things as he fell from the compartment. He felt his oxygen mask tear loose from over his mouth and nose. High altitude equipment was not as sophisticated as it is today and the mask was held in place only by a narrow piece of elastic. Berk described it as "about the same type used for a woman's garter." His official report stated, "I felt my arm catch on something, probably the radio extension cords, saw the tail of the airplane go by, and felt a jolt, at which time I lapsed into unconsciousness...."

A long period of blackness turned gray, then to brightness, then to brilliant, light blue as consciousness returned. The sun swept across his sight, moving quickly from left to right. Berk looked down at his body, at his hands. Details came into focus. He felt like he was bouncing about in the parachute harness and looked above his head at the white silk canopy. A sudden fright engulfed him. There were huge holes in the fabric - and the canopy wasn't round-shaped at all. Part of the bottom edge fluttered wildly as the parachute jerked about from side to side, then whipped about in half-circles. His mind cleared as oxygen became sufficient at his altitude. Berk tugged ferociously on suspension lines, several at a time at first, one hand at a time, then two-handedly. He swore loudly in frustration, unable to stop oscillations and twisting. He wondered how fast he was falling.

The report to P&W officials and the U.S. Navy said, a bit more objectively the next day: "At about fifteen thousand feet I regained consciousness and noticed that I was rotating rapidly in circles which prompted me to look at the chute. What I saw had me wondering the rest of the way down. The parachute was torn through the middle from end to end with a long slit in a third panel. I tried to pull different lines to stop the rotation, but to no avail. As I got close to the ground, I first realized how fast I was dropping and hit the ground with a 'whomp' and doubled up and rolled down a slope ....

Berk was knocked out by his thumping landing, but was uninjured, except for slight pain in his left knee and ankle.

Spectators came to his rescue, and took him for medical treatment for his burned hands and face. Later he returned to the crash site with New York state police. Berk concluded his two-page official report thus: "The airplane was completely disintegrated and the remains of the engine were embedded about ten feet in the ground. The propeller was not with the engine but spectators said it was located a few miles away. The remains of the airplane were strewn about the countryside over an area of a few miles. The State Police of New York and Connecticut very kindly relayed me to Rentschler Field with my belongings which consisted of a throat mike, a data board and chronograph, and a badly torn but treasured parachute."

Berk told the author that he could still vividly recall the agonizing, unendurable moments in the fiery cockpit. "I would," he said, "have jumped from that plane even if I didn't have a parachute. You can't imagine such pain! I would not have let myself die that way!"

His love of flying made him impatient as company medical personnel made him wait until burns healed sufficiently to clear him for test duty.

Eight years later - in 1951 - Paul Berk made another emergency bailout, that time from a U.S. Navy F9F-5 jet fighter undergoing P&W's testing. At the time, he was among the first pilots in the country to make an emergency bailout using an ejection seat.

After an hour's flight of routine testing in the Grumman jet, and at .9 Mach - almost reaching the speed of sound - the sleek plane's power plant flamed out at forty-thousand feet. Berk could not relight the flame-out and anxiously searched the area below for a place to land the powerless aircraft.

Nothing! He was losing altitude quickly - and his radio was not working! He couldn't tell anyone what was happening. At five-thousand-foot intervals Berk tried restarting the engine, without success.

Test Pilot Paul Berk inspects the cowling of his jet fighter from which he parachuted to safety from 6,000 feet after the craft failed to respond properly. The cowling was ejected from the plane when the pilot pressed an emergency button used in throwing the pilot free of the craft. The wreckage was found several miles from Berk's point of landing in Glastonbury. Hartford Courant - April 7th, 1951

As soon as Berk pushed the button that started the ejection sequence, he quickly reached up and grasped two rope loop handles built into the top of the seat, and yanked down a canvas shield designed to protect a pilot's face during ejection. The entire seat assembly shot up quickly, powerfully launched from the disabled plane by small rockets. Berk felt himself buffeted harshly in the one-hundred-sixty-knot (184 mph) airstream and anxiously waited for gyrations to be stopped by the drogue chute designed to immediately deploy and stabilize the seat so a pilot could push away from the seat and then deploy a back-style parachute. But the seat kept tumbling and twisting wildly. The drogue system attached to the seat unit had failed.

On the ground a surveyor and his assistant heard an unusual screech, then a loud pop, and "looked up to see a parachute open and the pilot floating down to earth." Berk later said to newspaper reporters that "the puff of smoke was caused by the ejector mechanism which also accounted for the 'pop' heard by the surveyors."

Berk had quickly sensed that the high-speed ejection procedure was not going as it was supposed to and let go of the face-shield loops and pushed himself awkwardly out of the bulky metal seat, in the manner he would have used for separating from the drogue- stabilized ejection unit. He worried about being hit by the heavy tumbling seat as he manually deployed his parachute by pulling the back-style parachute's ripcord.

(Automatic inertial take-up reels had not yet been completely developed. Such reels, in later seat models, when suddenly actuated, super-quickly reeled in loose wide webbing secured between low and high points of the ejection seat assembly. When slack, the webbing followed the inside contour of the seat and back of ejection unit. When actuated by the pilot initiating the ejection procedure, the strong webbing had a "snapping" type of action as it straightened and shortened between lower and upper seat mountings, thereby forcefully thrusting a pilot free of a confining seat, followed by automatic actuation of a pilot's parachute. But that sophisticated system was still only in advanced testing.)

Paul Berk clutched at the place on his left side of his chest where he knew the ripcord ought to be, felt what he thought sure was the handle in its pocket, and yanked with all the force he could muster. He had instinctively and fortunately done the right thing and the parachute canopy deployed and inflated properly.

Berk, in his parachute descent, drifted a considerable distance from where he had left the plane to where he landed. Slipping down through a stand of thin, new-tree growth, he landed roughly, but without a scratch.

Another spectator, by chance, looked up to watch the plane at six thousand feet, "when suddenly he saw 'a puff of smoke' and then the pilot shooting from the craft. He followed the path of the parachute and then drove to the scene to help."

Two National Guard aircraft, a Pratt & Whitney helicopter, and several observation planes joined in a search for the crash site. The scattered wreckage of the fighter was finally located, after a long, exhausting hunt, about a mile from where the parachutist had landed. But it was a difficult search. Berk had precisely aimed his helpless plane and only after two civilian searchers had lighted a smudge fire in dense woods was the helicopter pilot able to fly to the wreckage and radio map coordinates to other searchers, four hours after the veteran test pilot had ejected from the fighter plane.

Paul Berk was mandatorily retired as P&W's Senior Test Pilot when he reached the company's age limit. By then he had spent more than four decades as a flight instructor, experimental aircraft pilot, tester of jet fighters and bombers, and recreational small plane aviator. His desire to fly has not diminished and he flies at every opportunity, occasionally airlifting skydivers so they can make parachute jumps for fun.

Twice in his long, interesting, and exciting flying career he was able to fly again because of parachutes.

The author can be contacted via e-mail: ParaHistry@aol.com