William Rankin

Lieutenant Colonel William Henry Rankin (October 16, 1920 – July 6, 2009) was the first person to survive a fall from the top of a cumulonimbus thunderstorm cloud. He was a pilot in the United States Marine Corps and a World War II and Korean War veteran. In 1959, he was flying an F-8 Crusader jet fighter over a cumulonimbus cloud when the engine failed, and he ejected and parachuted into the cloud.

Ejection On July 26, 1959, Rankin was flying from Naval Air Station South Weymouth, Massachusetts, to Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina. He climbed over a thunderhead that peaked at ; then—at and at mach 0.82—he heard a loud bump and rumble from the engine. The engine stopped, and a fire warning light flashed. After ten minutes, Rankin was still aloft, carried by updrafts and getting hit by hailstones. Violent spinning and pounding caused him to vomit. Lightning appeared, which he described as blue sheets several feet thick, and thunder that he could feel. "I saw lightning all around me, over, above, everywhere, and I saw it in every shape imaginable. But when very close it appeared mainly as a huge, bluish sheet, several feet thick, sometimes sticking close to me in pairs, like the blades of a scissor..." The rain forced him to hold his breath to keep from drowning. One lightning bolt lit up the parachute, making Rankin believe he had died. His story was covered in the March 2, 2017, episode of The Dollop Podcast. His story was covered in the television show Mysteries at the Museum, season 14, episode 9.