The late afternoon sunlight glinted from the silver and orange fuselages as the US Marine Corps pilots flew high above the Carolinas close to the speed of sound.

The lead jet was piloted by 39-year-old Lt. Col William Rankin, a veteran of both World War 2 and the Korean War. He was accompanied by his wingman, Lt. Herbert Nolan. The pilots were cruising at 47,000 feet to stay above a large, surly looking column of cumulonimbus cloud which was massing about a half mile below them, threatening to drench the pilots after they popped open their canopies at their mission destination now fairly close below.

Minutes before they were scheduled to begin their descent towards Beaufort, William Rankin heard a startling series of grinding sounds coming from his Crusader's engine. The cockpit shook and most of his warning lights blinked on and readings decayed as most instrument needles headed ' South.'

The Crusader's powerful engine chose to quit.

As the ' flamed-out ' Crusader dipped earthward, Lt.Col Rankin switched on the jet fighter's emergency generator to provide alternative electric power, and matter of factly transmitted to Nolan : " Complete engine failure and I might have to eject."

Unable to airstart his engine, while simultaneously disallowing the fighter from accelerating to near-supersonic, Rankin grasped the two emergency eject handles. He was aware of his 9 mile high altitude, he double-checked visor down and helmet strap secure. His oxygen mask and portable oxygen cylinder should keep him breathing in the rarefied atmosphere.

He was also wary of the ominous gray soup of storm that lurked below; but having previously experien-ced a bail out amidst enemy fire in Korea, a bit of inclement weather didn't seem all that scary.

At approximately 6:00 pm, Lt Col Rankin concluded that his Crusader was unrecoverable and he pulled seriously hard on both ejection handles. An explosive charge rocketed him into the thin air with enough force and wind blast to rip off a skin-tight left glove.

Bill Rankin had spent a fair amount of time skydiving in his career-both premeditated and otherwise-but this particular dive would perhaps be unlike any that he or any living person had experienced before.

As Rankin's summer flight-suited body plunged down into maelstrom, he would soon be tossed around in unbelievable directions . . . as brilliant lightning flashes slashed through dark cloud. Rankin had little time to be distracted. The extreme cold penetrated deep into his flesh and the sudden switch in surrounding air pressure caused a nosebleed as his guts swelled up [ adding attention-getting pain.]

As the wind roared in his ears, he gasped up oxygen from his emergency breathing apparatus while resisting the urge to pull his parachute's rip cord; its built-in barometer was designed to auto-deploy the parachute at a safe breathing altitude, and his supply of emergency oxygen was limited. Opening the chute early would prolong his descent and might result in death due to asphyxiation or hypothermia. Under normal circumstances one would expect about three and a half minutes of free-fall to reach the breathable altitude of 10,000 feet. The circumstances, however, were not normal.

After falling for a mere 10 seconds, Bill Rankin penetrated the top of the anvil-shaped storm.

The dense gray cloud smothered out the summer sun, and the temperature dropped rapidly. In less than a minute the extreme cold and wind began to inflict Rankin's extremities with frostbite; particularly his glove-less left hand. The wind was a cacophony inside his flight helmet. Freezing, injured, and unable to see more than a few feet in the murky cloud, the Lieutenant Colonel mustered all of his will power to keep his hand far away from his chute's manual D ring.

After falling through damp darkness for an interminable time, Rankin began to grow concerned that the automatic device on his parachute had malfunctioned. He felt certain that he had been descending for several minutes, though he was aware that one's sense of time is a fickle thing under such distracting circumstances.

He anxiously fingered his rip cord's D ring, wondering whether to give it a yank. He'd lost all feeling in his bare left hand, and his other limbs weren't faring much better.

It was then that he felt a sharp and familiar upward tug on his harness-his parachute had deployed.

It was too dark to see the chute's canopy above him, but he tugged on the risers and concluded that it had indeed inflated properly. And it was a welcome reprieve from his wet-and-swirling 160 mph free-fall.

Unfortunately, nowhere near the 10M foot altitude he expected his chute to automatically open, the volatile storm had triggered his barometric parachute switch prematurely. Bill Rankin was still far from the ground. And he was now . . .

. . .' dangling helplessly in the belly ' of a very . . surreal . . experience !

" I'd see lightning," Rankin would later muse, " Boy, do I remember that lightning. And I never exactly heard the thunder . . I was able to feel it."

Amidst the electrical spectacle, the storm's sheer lines pressed Rankin downward until he encountered its powerful updrafts-the identical vertical sheer lines that return hailstones aloft to accumulate another layer of ice . . and hauled Rankin and his chute thousands of feet higher within the thunderstorm.

That dangerous vertical sheer line effect is familiar to paragliding enthusiasts, who called it . . [ damn ] cloud suck.

At the apex of the sheer line, Rankin was lifted up into his parachute, causing it to drape over him like a wet sheet. He justifiably worried that he might become entangled with it . . like a mummy . . then fall into a hopeless ' roman candle ' drop in a terminal velocity free-fall.

Again, he fell back into a normal parachutist' position as the next vertical updraft once again yanked him higher . . in the increasing darkness.

He lost count the multiple times this up-and-down cycle repeated itself. "At one point, I became violently ill and hugely vomited it my oxygen mask. . as my frozen fingers clumsily attempted to unclasp the mask, to breath once again and wipe out the vomit.

At times, the air was so saturated with suspended water that each now unmasked intake of breath caused a stiletto-like pain inside his upper throat, and feared drowning in ' near liquid ' air.

Being struck sharply being struck by thousands of large ball bearing-like hailstones . . paled in compar-ison to considering the fast driving shrapnel-like hailstones . . locating a weakness in a badly-sewn canopy seam(s).

. . . then tearing it to rags.

Rankin was uncertain how long he had been absorbing abuse, when he began to notice that the violence of his undulations was ebbing. He was also beginning to regain some sensation in his numb limbs, indicating that temperatures were warming. And the rain-which had previously been slashing from every conceivable direction-was now only falling from above.

Moments later, the cold, saturated Marine emerged from the underside of the cumulonimbus cloud amidst a warm summer rain. Below was a flat expanse of North Carolina backcountry, with no immediate signs of civilization. But Rankin's parachute was still functional, and he was just a few hundred feet from the ground, so all seemed relatively well. But the storm had one last parting gift.

As Rankin neared the ground a sudden gust of wind whisked him into a dense thicket. Helpless, he was pushed into the branches of a tree where his parachute became ensnared His momentum caused him to plow headfirst into the trunk. Fortunately his flight helmet protected his brain and eyes from serious damage.

Lt Col William Henry Rankin, U.S.M.C.

Bill Rankin removed himself from the troublesome tree and assessed.

The time was 6:40 pm.

Bill's brutalized body had spent around [ 40 ] forty minutes bobbing around in a scenario expert mountaineers unfondly refer to as the death zone.

Applying his Marine training, Rankin started walking in a search pattern until he located a backroad. He stood at the roadside and attempted to flag down the automobiles that occasionally passed, but it took some time to find a passerby bold enough to brake for a soggy, bleeding, bruised, frost-bitten, and vomit-sodden pilot.

Finally an obliging stranger stopped and drove Rankin back to a country store in the nearby town of Ahoskie, NC where he used the phone to summon an ambulance. While he awaited its arrival he took the luxury of slumping to the floor for some much-needed rest.

In the aftermath of his ordeal, Rankin spent several weeks recovering in the hospital. His injuries were surprisingly minor, consisting of mild frostbite and a touch of decompression shock. He eventually returned to duty, and the following year he chronicled his adventure in a now out-of-print book entitled : The Man Who Rode the Thunder.

No known human being before or since Col. Bill Rankin is known to have parachuted through a tower of a gigantic cumulonimbus then share his unique experience with others.

[ abridged ]