Hopefully the pilot is curled up in his sleeping bag waiting for rescue.

In the early 1960s a Westover AFB B-52 encountered extreme turbulence while flying a night low level (500') mission in Maine. The vertical tail separated from the aircraft. The Aircraft Commander (AC) ordered bail out.

Downward seats (Nav and Radar) had no chance. The gunner in the tail had no chance. The Copilot sucessfully ejected with a good chute but got hung in a tree unconcious and froze to death. The AC and Electronics Warfare Officer (EWO) ejected as the aircraft was entering the trees.

The AC's chute was blown open by the aircraft impact explosion and he drifted over a hill to a landing. His leg was broken because of ejecting with full rudder deflection. He crawled in his survival kit sleeping bag and awaited rescue.

THE EWO found himself sitting in a snowbank NEAR HIS EJECTION SEAT. His chute never opened. THe seat became a combination sled/snow plow and carved a path down an incline through the trees before he separated from it. He suffer injuries including frostbite.

I was at 99th Bomb Wing party when word came that we had lost an aircraft. A more detailed (and probably correct) version of the accident can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_El...ain_B-52_crash

Sometimes the worse crashes are survivable.