Word: trippodi
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...last flight. Three of its engines were ablaze and it was settling fast. At 5,000 feet, Captain Harold L. Barry passed the order over the intercom: "Abandon ship." Then he cut in the automatic pilot. In the radio compartment just abaft the pilots' seats, Staff Sergeant Vitale Trippodi tied down his radio key to keep a signal on the air as long as the aircraft was 'aloft, and dove for the escape hatch. Within seconds, all 17 aboard had leaped into a 55-mile gale, drifted down into the wilderness of Princess Royal Island, off the coast...
...Radioman Trippodi hung in his chute in excruciating pain. He had come down in a treetop near the peak of a steep, 4OO-ft. incline. Trying to unbuckle his harness, he slipped. His foot caught in the leg strap and he had hung head down, helpless. Next morning two of the flyers found him still hanging there. They cut him free, wrapped him in his parachute, and put him in a bed of spruce boughs; but they themselves were too weak to get him down the cliff...
...weather hampered search craft. But in the afternoon of the second day, the Canadian fishing ship Cape Perry sighted two of the men signaling from the shore, and in a short time it had picked up ten. Late the same day, a detail from the Canadian destroyer Cayuga reached Trippodi, who was by now delirious, suffering from exhaustion, shock and frostbitten feet. In all, twelve were rescued...
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