During World War two, a soldier found himself in one of the most terrifying situations you could ever possibly be in, with his plane almost completely destroyed during a mission. He was left with just two choices to either stay inside the aircraft and slowly burn in the rapidly spreading flames, or to jump outside without a parachute and plummet to the ground 18,000 feet below.

It was an impossible decision. He knew that he was dead either way. But no matter how hard it was, no matter how unfair it was, he had to make a choice. He had to choose how he was going to die. So he did. And it would result in one of the most insane, incredible survival stories in history. Welcome back, guys.

My name is Andy Jiang, and this is hitting stores on the night of March 24th, 1944. A 21 year old Royal Air Force gunner named Nicholas Altman took off in a plane, along with six other airmen, to carry out a bombing raid on the German capital of Berlin. Having already successfully completed 14 different operations in the past, Nicholas and his crew were fairly experienced.

They were a very capable team that knew what they were doing, and that night was no different. Flying in their Lancaster, Mach two bomber, which the team affectionately called Werewolf, they were able to drop off their payload on time and on target exactly as they had planned. However, as Nicholas and his team were returning back from their missions shortly before midnight, something unexpected happened.

Although the night sky had been fairly calm up until this point, as they were traveling back from Berlin, an unusually strong gust of wind suddenly began coming in from the north, despite the pilot trying to keep the planes steady. And of course, these violent winds were just so strong. They sent the plane soaring for out of their intended direction.

And by the time the pilot realized that there were no flying over the war region of Germany, which was very well known for having an extremely high number of anti-aircraft defenses on the ground, as well as enemy planes patrolling the skies. It was already far too late to Nicholas and the rest of the German surprise and enemy fighter aircraft suddenly appeared from underneath their plane, firing at them with cannons and machine guns.

Although, Nicholas, this pilot, desperately tried to spin and we have to dodge the attack, the plane's right wing and fuselage were seen shredded apart by the hail of bullets erupting into this massive wall of flames smack in the middle of their aircraft. It was an absolutely devastating blow. Their plane was not only beyond saving and could no longer stay up in the sky.

It could also explode at any given second. As such, when the pilot realized they secretly yelled through the intercom for the crew to grab their parachutes and jump from the plane. Now, most of the airmen realizing just how dire the situation was immediately did. However, when Nicholas went to grab his parachute, which is stored in the main body of the plane since this trade area was just too cramped for him to wear it on his back, he suddenly realized that it was on fire.

To his horror, the flames from earlier had already spread way too far and had almost completely engulfed the middle of the plane. When Nicholas completely panicked at this point. Gritted teeth and in a desperate attempt to quickly move through the flames to reach his burning parachute so that he could maybe stamp it out, the fire seared his bare face and wrists and was so excruciatingly hot that it even started melting the rubber oxygen mask he had on within just mere seconds of enduring the brutal heat.

He really said it was futile and quickly jumped back inside a small turret area and slammed the door with the flames that practically pressed up against the outside of that door. Nicholas was trapped inside, although a section of his clothes were still burning from him trying to move through the fire. There was so much adrenaline running through him in that moment that he barely even felt any pain.

His mind was much more focused on the situation unfolding in front of him, and the harsh reality of the situation was becoming clearer and clearer. By the second this was it. There was no hope left. No matter what he did, he was going to die. There was no way out. In his own words, I had no doubt at all that this was the end of the line.

The question was whether to stay in the plane and fly or jump to my death. It was a terrible choice to have to make a choice that no one should ever have to make, but with no other option. After just a few seconds, Nicholas had decided he knew that jumping would simply be a much cleaner, quicker and easier way to go than slowly burning in the flames.

As such, he rotated his turret so that he was facing an open direction and without even bothering to take off his helmet or his intercom headphones. Nicholas jumped out into the night, 18,000 feet in the air. All of a sudden, everything became very quiet, the roar of the planes dying engine and the crackling of the flames that had been so loud just a moment earlier.

Almost immediately disappeared for a moment. Nicholas, what's strangely suspended in space like you wasn't following at all. Bitter regrets suddenly filled his mind as he thought about his home and his family and how they would never see him again. And the last thought that crossed his mind was that for some reason, it didn't feel strange at all that he was going to die.

And then everything suddenly went black. When Nicholas woke up again, he was laying on snowy ground, facing upwards towards the stars. As the memories of what had happened quickly came back to him, a flash of shock and relief suddenly jolted through him as he realized that somehow he was still breathing. As Nicholas slowly sat up feeling sore all over, he began to nervously assess himself for injuries.

Although he had figured that a fall from such a tall height would 100% have shattered his legs and broken both of his feet or worse. To his incredible surprise, he actually seemed perfectly fine outside of the pretty bad burns and cuts that he had gotten from when he was inside of the plane. The only new injuries that he had was some minor bruising on his body, some wooden splinters in his skin, and a twisted knee.

Nicholas had literally fallen from 18,000 feet in the air, hitting the ground at roughly 120 miles per hour. And he somehow still didn't break or even just fracture a single bone. When Nicholas looked around the bewilderment, trying to figure out just how he had managed to survive such a horrible fall practically unscathed, he was soon able to put the pieces together.

Turns out, since he landed in the middle of a forest full of pine trees, the flexible and relatively soft branches of his trees had greatly slowed down his descent as a result, since there had also been around 18 inches of snow on the ground in that forest. After having the speed of his fall slowed down, Nicholas had basically fallen onto a sort of soft, cold cushion rather than the rock hard earth.

And since he had also lost consciousness at some point during his fall, his body had been slack when it finally made contact with the ground, giving him even more protection. It had to have been the luckiest fall in history. And when Nicholas looked around some more, that became even more apparent. Just 60 feet away from where he had landed, the forest ended.

Since the sun was actually able to reach and warm up the ground there, there was practically no snow at all. So had Nicholas landed anywhere outside this forest and he easily could have, he would have instantly died. And there was absolutely nothing that could have saved him. But although Nicholas had gone an extra, namely lucky, and he was still alive, he wasn't out of the clear just yet, since both of his boots had somehow disappeared, likely having been ripped off of his feet during his fall.

There was no way that he could walk through the snow and the freezing went to court in just his socks, especially considering how he couldn't put much weight onto his twisted knee at all. As such, despite knowing that he was an enemy territory. Nicholas had no choice but to blow his distress whistle, hoping that someone nice would find him and that they'd be willing to help save him.

In another stroke of luck. That's exactly what happened. He was eventually found by some kind German locals who, despite Nicholas not being on their side, carried him to a local infirmary. From there, Nicholas was sent over to a bigger hospital that had better facilities and could treat him better. And before long, all of his burns had been tended to.

The wooden splinters had been removed from his body and he was well on his way to recovery. But the very minute Nicholas was well enough to talk again, he was immediately brought in to be interrogated by the Gestapo, the secret state police of Nazi Germany. Now, the Gestapo was not happy with Nicholas, since it sort of just popped up out of nowhere.

They were absolutely convinced that he had to be some sort of undercover spy, which was a huge problem since the punishment for spies was execution. When Nicholas told them the truth, which was that he had fallen from a plane 18,000 feet in the air without a parachute. They obviously trusted him even less, since they, of course, just did not buy that.

But although his interrogators seemed quite ready to just throw him in a solitary to wait for his execution. Little did they know Nicholas actually had proof to support his insane story, as the interrogators wrote, laughing at him for thinking that they believe such an absurd claim. Nicholas, getting annoyed, told them the exact location where he had landed and then challenged them to go find the harness that he had been wearing while falling.

Since this harness was the only thing his peers who could have been attached to if he had been wearing a parachute, the harness would so that since would still have its lift webs in the stowed position. Although the Gestapo, of course, still not. Nicholas was bluffing, they figured that they had nothing to lose by just looking for this guy's harness and seeing if the story checked out.

But when they actually found it to their incredible shock, its lift webs were genuinely still in the stowed position. Just like Nicholas said they would be. And when they also came across the wreckage of Nicholas's plane soon later and found the ripcord handle and the cable of his parachute still packed inside their storage container, they knew that somehow, against all odds, Nicholas had actually been telling the truth all along.

When the Gestapo realized this, they suddenly became a lot less hostile to Nicholas. In fact, he almost instantly became a sort of minor celebrity at the Prisoner of War Transit Center that he was being held at with everyone from his fellow prisoners to the German authorities wanting to hear him tell his story. The German Air Force officers there respected him in it's unbelievable survival story so much that they even gave him a commemorative certificate with their signature on it in case anyone in the future didn't believe his claims.

The certificate read it has been investigated and corroborated by the German authorities that the claim of Sergeant Alchemy number 1431537 is true in all respects, namely that he has made a descent from 18,000 feet without a parachute, made a safe landing without injuries, the parachute having been on fire in the aircraft. He landed in deep snow among fir trees.

Nicholas was then photographed for the German press, but despite his fame, at the end of the day, he was, of course, still a prisoner of war as such. Shortly after arriving to the Prisoner of War Transit Center, Nicholas was sent to Stalag Luft three, a notoriously brutal prison camp there, although his story earned him just a little bit of preferential treatment, like some extra cigarets.

The living conditions were just so unbelievably cruel for everyone. One time, the camp's 10,000 inmates were forced to trek hundreds of miles to a new prison location through a freezing blizzard with very little food. Hundreds of people ended up dying, but luckily, Nicholas once again managed to survive. In 1945, just over a year after Nicholas fell from the sky, he was finally freed and allowed to return home.

What's really crazy, though, is that he actually ended up receiving more injuries from his life after the war than he did from falling 18,000 feet without a parachute. After his discharge from the Royal Air Force Nicholas went to work at a chemical plant. Unfortunately, very soon after starting this new job, he was working in a room full of poisonous chlorine gas when he suddenly received a severe electric shock from some equipment he was using.

As he quickly jolted away from this equipment, his gas mask accidentally caught on something and was ripped from his face, causing him to start breathing in the toxic fumes. An entire 15 minutes passed before Nicholas was finally found, slowly choking to death. But luckily, he was trucked to safety just in time to be saved. Shortly after that, Nicholas was once again working at the chemical plant when a siphoning pipe near him burst spring his face with sulfuric acid, which is extremely corrosive, extremely luckily.

However, it just so happened to be a 40 gallon drum of lime was nearby, so Nicholas was able to immediately dove in headfirst and neutralize the acid. Although he ended up with first degree burns, he had managed to escape death once again. But shortly after that, when Nicholas had just recovered from his burns and was back to work at the chemical plants, another incident occurred where a nine foot long piece of steel fell from its mountings as he passed by landing on top of him in credibly, though, he managed to survive yet again and somehow only had some minor bruising.

After the third incident, Nicholas finally figured that that was enough close calls for him, so he quit and became a furniture salesman and then started a family. He eventually passed away in June 1987 at age 64. Take care, guys, and I'll see you all next week.