Spider Crack in Plane Window: Rapid Decompression

An Air Force captain, George Burk, boards a plane bound for a base in Washington State. It’s a Monday morning like any other. Or at least, it should be. A structural failure will lead to a horror scenario in the sky. As the windows are blown out, this aluminium tube will hurtle towards the earth at over 250 miles an hour. By the time George and his colleagues have gathered their senses, it will already be too late… A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Matt Peaty | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot, designed to keep you connected. Powered by Verizon's 5G network. And, no contract holding you back. Plans start at $25 a month. Or get the premium Visible Plus Pro Plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code HACK. Make the switch at visible.com. Terms apply. See visible.com for details.

• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 0:48John Hopkins?

  It's Monday, May 4th, 1970. About 8:25 in the morning.

• 0:55John Hopkins?

  Heavy fog mantles the sky above Sonoma County, California.

• 1:01John Hopkins?

  Sharp, rainy squalls cut through the cloud like arrow showers, falling on the rolling hills and fields, the oak forests, and cattle pastures.

• 1:12John Hopkins?

  Two and a half thousand feet up, a US military-training aircraft struggles to climb above the dense gray cloud.

• 1:19John Hopkins?

  Water droplets bead on the cockpit windows as the plane gains altitude, forcing its way up through layers of soaking mist.

• 1:28John Hopkins?

  Designed in the 1940s and modeled on early airliners, the Convair T-29 is a bulky, twin-engined workhorse, built mainly for radar and navigation training. Now, after three decades of service, the fleet is showing its age. The stainless steel fuselage trembles as the aircraft continues its shaky ascent, propellers churning the air, turbines battling the downdrafts.

• 1:56John Hopkins?

  Inside the cabin, Captain George Burke sits slumped over a chart table, his head resting in his folded arms.

• 2:05John Hopkins?

  Conditions might be a little rough, but for an experienced airman like George, it's just another day in the office.

• 2:12John Hopkins?

  The 28-year-old's eyes are closed and he's on the verge of drifting off. When suddenly...

• 2:20Speaker 03

  I raised my head quickly, turned to my right, and the window, spider crack, from front to back. I don't know if it was the outside window or the inside window.

• 2:31John Hopkins?

  George stares at the fractured glazing. The crack gets bigger, jagged pencil lines zigzagging rapidly across the window. He turns to one of his colleagues, Kenny.

• 2:43Speaker 03

  I hollered across the table to Kenny. "You better go forward and tell Pappy, who is our crew chief, we may have a problem." Kenny unbuckled, he disappeared to my left through the structure bulkhead doorway. He was gone, I don't know, ten seconds. The next sound I heard was something like "ummm", only louder. There was a microsecond pause, and then "bang", the airplane decompressed.

• 3:12John Hopkins?

  Rapid explosive decompression, a sudden extreme loss in cabin pressure. There is a concussive wave of sound that feels more like a physical force than a noise. It knocks the breath from George's lungs.

• 3:27John Hopkins?

  In an instant, every window bursts, vanishing into a spray of shards. Loose objects were immediately sucked through the empty holes, whisked off into the void. A deafening roar engulfs the aircraft, followed by a blast of icy air as the wind rushes through the cabin.

• 3:45John Hopkins?

  Fumbling with his seatbelt, George unbuckles and gets to his feet. Gripping onto whatever he can, he hauls himself towards the cockpit to consult with the crew chief. But before George can make it out into the center aisle, he spots something through one of the windows. Flames.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  Fire was rolling over and under the engine culling, engines run fire. All I heard in the background, "vroom, vroom", pitching on the rolling, we're going down.

• 4:19John Hopkins?

  Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision? Could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives.

• 4:40John Hopkins?

  In this episode, we meet US Air Force captain and Vietnam War veteran George Burke. In May 1970, George is on board a plane bound for an airbase in Washington State. It's a routine mission, a Monday morning like any other. Or at least it should be.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  Soon as the airplane decompressed and the windows blew out, we pitched violently nose up and then violently nose down.

• 5:03John Hopkins?

  A structural failure will lead to a horror scenario in the sky. The plane rapidly decompresses mid-flight, blowing out the windows and turning this military aircraft into a hollow aluminium tube, hurtling towards the earth at over 250 miles an hour. By the time George and his colleagues have gathered their senses, it will already be too late.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  I glanced quickly into the cockpit. The nose was split open, the top of the canopy had been peeled back, the left side was completely gone.

• 5:35John Hopkins?

  Exactly what happens next will remain a mystery, even to George. But suffice to say, there will be an impact, a fire, a desperate scramble for safety, and at the bleakest possible moment, an unlikely savior.

• 5:50Speaker 03

  He could have continued down that ravine. Normally, within 30 seconds or a minute, I would have burned to dust.

• 5:56John Hopkins?

  I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

• 6:23John Hopkins?

  It's 6:45 a.m. on Monday, May the 4th, 1970.

• 6:29John Hopkins?

  Hamilton Air Force Base, Novato, Northern California. Captain George Burke stands at his living room window, watching raindrops chase each other down the glass.

• 6:40John Hopkins?

  Pale sheets of drizzle and fog ripple over the lawn. The branches of the tree across the street thrash quietly in the wind, like arms signaling distress.

• 6:51John Hopkins?

  George sighs. Not exactly ideal conditions for flying. The 28-year-old laces up his shoes and heads out of the door, shutting it quietly behind him so as not to wake his sleeping wife and children.

• 7:05John Hopkins?

  He loads his duffel and briefcase into the back of his Austin Healey, then climbs into the car and backs it carefully out of the driveway.

• 7:18John Hopkins?

  George drives down his residential streets, passing row upon row of purpose-built officers' cottages. The houses look identical to his own, with their neat driveways and picket fences, their white stucco walls and terracotta roof tiles. Sodden palm trees droop in the manicured lawns.

• 7:38John Hopkins?

  George takes a left turn and continues through the quiet base.

• 7:43John Hopkins?

  He passes the barrack-style accommodation blocks where the unmarried recruits are billeted. He passes administrative buildings, hangars, the commissary, until eventually he reaches his destination: base operations.

• 7:58John Hopkins?

  Moments later, George is stepping through the door of the mission briefing room, nodding "good morning" to his sleepy-eyed colleagues.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  My job was chief of an air traffic control analysis team. We analyzed the military base's air traffic control radar, control tower, VFR. We had a group of technicians, comm technicians, that would check the radios and the comm centers, etc.

• 8:22John Hopkins?

  Today, George and his team are flying 900 miles north to Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington State for systematic analysis checks. It's a journey George has made many times before, a briefing he's received on countless prior occasions. He's been stationed here at Hamilton for the better part of two years. In that time, the steady rhythm of life on the base has become second nature, an endless cycle of repetition and routine.

• 8:50John Hopkins?

  But that's all about to change. A few weeks ago, George received a promotion, a reassignment to a US airbase in Okinawa, Japan, where he's to run a radar facility in one of the most strategically important locations in the Pacific. It's a great opportunity, a big step up in his career.

• 9:11John Hopkins?

  With his reassignment pending, he has just two more missions to fly here in California, including this morning's trip to Fairchild.

• 9:20John Hopkins?

  After delays due to the heavy fog, George and his crew received the go-ahead. They walk out across the airstrip to the waiting plane, a Convair T-29. The men, 14 in total, board the plane and get into position. George buckles himself into his usual seat beside two colleagues, Kenny and Fred.

• 9:44John Hopkins?

  The pilot sparks the engines and taxis the plane onto the mist-shrouded runway.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  We took off, east-northeast out of Hamilton, climbing right into turn. I've made that trip many, many times. Headed back to what would have been my next-to-last TDY to Fairchild Air Force Base right outside Spokane, Washington.

• 10:06John Hopkins?

  The aircraft surges upward through the dense swirling fog. Soon they'll be above the clouds and the weather should clear.

• 10:15John Hopkins?

  Lulled by the monotonous drone of the engine, George yawns. He folds his arms, shuts his eyes, and lets his chin drop onto his chest.

• 10:26John Hopkins?

  A nap will make this short flight go even quicker.

• 10:37Speaker 00

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• 11:06Speaker 01

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• 11:26John Hopkins?

  At 28, George Burke has already enjoyed a successful military career. There was a time, however, when the idea of joining the Air Force would have seemed like a deviation from his true passion: baseball. At high school, George was the star of his varsity team. Later at college in Michigan, he caught the eye of local talent scouts and it seemed inevitable that the big leagues would soon come calling. That is, until a fateful injury scuppered everything.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  My junior year, playing ball in the summer, I hurt my left arm, rolling every comeback. My dream of signing a professional baseball contract ended. I use a term that the scouts scurried, like when you turn on the lights at night and all the bugs disappear. They went away very quickly.

• 12:17John Hopkins?

  With his dream in tatters, George found himself adrift. After finishing college, he bounced around a couple of different jobs, but nothing felt quite right.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  So I was in limbo. I was set back emotionally. I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't really have any direction per se. I had a couple of jobs after I graduated. I ended up getting married. My brother-in-law was in the Air Force at the time. He was a pilot. This was 1964.

• 12:47John Hopkins?

  And so, George took himself down to the local Air Force recruitment depot. He aced his qualifying tests, then shipped off to Officers Candidate School in Texas.

• 13:00John Hopkins?

  Soon, it was time to specialize.

• 13:03John Hopkins?

  George wanted to be a pilot, but after a medical examination revealed a problem with his eyesight, flying was off the cards.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  They found out I had a stigmatism in one of my eyes, depth perception. Back then, it couldn't be fixed. So, I had a choice, either get out of the Air Force or stay in. Maybe early 67. A place called Vietnam was starting to heat up.

• 13:31John Hopkins?

  While George contemplated his future, America's involvement in the Vietnam War was intensifying.

• 13:38John Hopkins?

  The military was in urgent need of skilled personnel, including air traffic control officers.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  I knew that if I declined and got out of the Air Force, I didn't really know what I was going to do. But if I stayed in, they were going to offer me a position, as it turned out probably was going to be in Vietnam because air traffic control officers were critical. They would have offered me orders to go to Vietnam. Had I turned them down, I would have been required to leave the Air Force.

• 14:08John Hopkins?

  In the end, George wasn't prepared to do that.

• 14:12John Hopkins?

  He broke the news to his wife that he would soon be shipping out. And a few months later, in October 1967, he landed in Da Nang, on the eastern coast of central Vietnam.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  As they opened the back door for the steps and they deployed the stairs, what three things I remember was the heat, stifling, the noise, an active military base at night, never closes, and the smell, like I walked into an open sewer. I remember thinking to myself, what the hell have I gotten myself into?

• 14:44John Hopkins?

  As a critical hub for air operations in Vietnam, Da Nang Base was the busiest airport in the world at the time. From their lofty post in the control tower, George and his colleagues were responsible for coordinating the military and civilian aircraft that came through every day.

• 15:01John Hopkins?

  The work was tough, but rewarding. And George excelled under pressure. He was soon promoted to the rank of captain, and one year after his deployment, he was offered a reassignment, an opportunity to lead an air traffic control analysis team at Hamilton Air Force Base in California. George accepted the new posting, packed up his things, and flew home to the US.

• 15:25John Hopkins?

  From the chaos and humidity of Da Nang Province, he was suddenly back with his family, living in the relative luxury of an officer's housing billet in the temperate climes of Northern California. And now, with another reassignment looming, this time to Okinawa, George is preparing for yet another change of circumstances, another exciting new chapter.

• 15:47John Hopkins?

  But first, there is final work to be done in the States. An assignment in Washington awaits.

• 16:01John Hopkins?

  It's about 8:30 a.m., two minutes after takeoff. The aircraft continues its bumpy climb over the vast plains of Northern California, straining against the elements, heading northeast. Rain pelts the cabin windows.

• 16:20John Hopkins?

  The navigation lights glow weakly through the fog. George sits with his head lowered and his eyes closed. The weather's a little rough, but nothing he hasn't experienced before.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  I don't know how long my head was on my arms, maybe just a few minutes, if that. I heard a cracking sound.

• 16:40John Hopkins?

  George's eyes snap open. He turns to the cabin window. A tiny spider crack has appeared in the glass, fine lines branching out from a single point.

• 16:53John Hopkins?

  He watches as the fracture spreads, the lines zigzagging outward like the cracking of ice on a frozen lake. George's chest tightens.

• 17:03John Hopkins?

  He bellows above the roar of the engines to his colleague Kenny, telling him to run and notify the crew chief, Pappy. Kenny nods. He unbuckles, starts making his way towards the cockpit.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  He was gone, I don't know, ten seconds. The next time I heard was something like "ummm", only louder. There's a microsecond pause, and then "bang", the airplane decompressed.

• 17:34John Hopkins?

  It feels like an explosion ripping through the aircraft. A gut punch of massive sonic energy. The windows shatter in unison, vaporized into a million shards. There is an ear-splitting roar, followed by a surge of freezing wind as the outside rushes in. Plain rocks, like a ship being tossed on heavy seas.

• 17:59Speaker 03

  We pitched violently nose up, and then violently nose down. And all I heard was a pitch of the engine going

• 18:08Speaker 03

  pitching, yawing, rolling, lot of snores I'd ever heard, the wind shear. I quickly glanced to my left and then to my right.

• 18:17John Hopkins?

  Mayhem is all around. Loose objects hurtle through the air. Papers, seat cushions, bags, all being sucked towards the howling black holes where the windows once were.

• 18:30John Hopkins?

  George clings to the base of his seat. To his left, through the smashed window, he can see coils of flame wrapped around the engine carlings, trailing through the air like orange streamers. He unbuckles his seatbelt. Gripping what he can, he gets to his feet.

• 18:47John Hopkins?

  Through the maelstrom of wind, rain, and debris, he can see Kenny making his way back down the center aisle, the loose corners of his raincoat flapping furiously. Beyond him, George can see inside the cockpit, or what's left of it.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  The nose was split open, the top of the canopy had been peeled back. Half the steering wheel was vibrating left to right and back and forth, left to right and back and forth. The left side was completely gone.

• 19:14John Hopkins?

  Horrifyingly, he can make out the pilot's body, torn apart, slumped limply in his seat. George turns back.

• 19:25John Hopkins?

  There's nothing left to do now, but brace for impact.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  I turn around, sat back down in my seat, buckled my seatbelt, put something in my lap. A cushion, blanket had blown free. I assumed a survival position as best I possibly could.

• 19:43John Hopkins?

  The aircraft lurches hard to one side, accelerating earthward at a thirty-degree angle. The shriek of tearing metal joins the howl of the wind as the fuselage begins to break apart, panels of steel ripped off by the air.

• 19:59John Hopkins?

  The ground appears through breaks in the fog, brief flashes of green. Then the plane drops below the cloud, and suddenly the earth is everywhere. The hills, forests, streams, and lakes, all surging up to meet them.

• 20:16John Hopkins?

  Until.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  Impact, the breaking and bending and shearing of metal. I was thrust violently back, and my head hit the back of the chair. My skull was fractured, and I was then violently thrown forward like a rag doll.

• 20:39John Hopkins?

  George lifts his head.

• 20:42John Hopkins?

  Blood pours from his misshapen nose. Smoke and debris swirl around him. There's a high-pitched ringing in his ears.

• 20:52John Hopkins?

  The plane seems to have stopped moving.

• 20:56John Hopkins?

  With trembling hands, he unbuckles his seatbelt and rises unsteadily to his feet. He turns to where Fred and Kenny were sitting moments ago, and calls their names. But before they have a chance to reply, there is a rush of wind and a surge of heat.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  The best sensation was like someone dumping large buckets of scalding hot water on me. We had about twelve hundred gallons of aviation fuel onboard. Everything looked black.

• 21:36Speaker 00

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• 22:05Speaker 04

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• 22:37John Hopkins?

  It's May the 4th, 1970, in the hills of Sonoma County, California. Around 8:30 in the morning.

• 22:46John Hopkins?

  A red pickup truck trundles along a dirt road, wending between fields of tall prairie grass. Behind the wheel sits rancher John Davio. Every morning, for the past 25 years, John has made this drive around the outer perimeter of his 2,000-acre cattle ranch, checking to make sure that none of his livestock have strayed from the herd. This morning, a gray and bleak Monday, John drives slow, raking his eyes back and forth across the pasture. It's raining, and the middle-aged farmer has to lean forward to see, headlights straining against the elements.

• 23:26John Hopkins?

  When he reaches the outermost boundary marker, John turns around and starts driving back to the house. Due to the foul weather, he's decided to cut his usual journey short. Later, when the rain stops, he'll come back out and pick up where he left off.

• 23:44John Hopkins?

  John starts down the road back to his house. But after travelling just a few hundred yards, he makes a sudden, impulsive decision. He veers from the road and sets off down the bottom of a shallow ravine, figuring it'll be a shortcut. The sooner he gets out of this rain, the better.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  All the years he'd been on that ranch, he'd never been through that ravine before. He smelled smoke. What are the neighbours burning in a day like this, and he clocked himself?

• 24:12John Hopkins?

  John sniffs the damp air again. It's definitely smoke. An acrid, sharp scent, billowing in the wind.

• 24:23John Hopkins?

  Strange. Does he go to investigate, or does he continue his journey home?

• 24:31Speaker 03

  He could have continued down that ravine. And literally within thirty seconds or a minute, I would have burned to death, literally. But he pivoted the truck ninety to the right, lurched up over this other side of the ravine, saw a tail of an airplane waste in, saw me running on the ground on fire.

• 24:52John Hopkins?

  The sight before John is jaw-dropping. The burning, smoking wreckage of an aircraft.

• 25:01John Hopkins?

  But amid the pulverized mess of fire and metal, someone is still alive. John spots George, and races over to where the young man is writhing on the ground, flames dancing over his body.

• 25:16John Hopkins?

  John scoops up two handfuls of soil and starts frantically heaping the damp earth onto the burning man, trying to extinguish the flames. It works. The fire goes out, and George falls still.

• 25:30John Hopkins?

  His eyes are closed. It's hard to tell if he's alive or dead.

• 25:36John Hopkins?

  John calls out, telling him to hang on, that he's gonna get help. Then he races back to his truck, jumps in, and thunders off to find a telephone.

• 25:56John Hopkins?

  Moments later, George regains his senses. He opens his eyes and inhales weakly. The air is filled with a horrible stench, a cocktail of smoldering vegetation, aviation fuel, and burnt flesh.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  The thoughts going through my head, not in any particular order. This is a dream. I'm gonna wake up. This isn't happening to me. I roll over on my back. Look at my hands. My hands are charred black. There was a glob of skin hanging off my left hand. Roll back over on my stomach, and to this day, I still believe I heard somebody crying for help inside the airplane.

• 26:39John Hopkins?

  It's faint, but George hears it. A lone, desperate voice.

• 26:46John Hopkins?

  He pushes himself onto his elbows and drags himself back towards the plane.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  I cried only, I was six foot five and a half at the time. Probably my height plus a few extra inches, right up to the airplane's skin, if you will. And I heard a hissing noise, muffled explosion, and a great deal of heat in my face.

• 27:12John Hopkins?

  A column of fire leaps into the sky, as the flammable vapors rising from the wreckage suddenly ignite.

• 27:19John Hopkins?

  George flinches, recoiling, as he is hit by a wave of superheated air.

• 27:26John Hopkins?

  If there was anyone left alive on board, there won't be now.

• 27:31John Hopkins?

  He swivels around and frantically scrambles away from the blaze. The ground around him is littered with burning debris, charred eucalyptus stumps. And something far worse.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  I looked to my right and I saw our crew chief, Pappy, had a dime-sized puncture wound in the back of the cerebellum. He was burned. And off to my right, through some broken fence wire, about fifteen yards from me, was one of my good friends, Major Bob Ward, who was on the airplane. He was dead, kind of semi-c curled up, smoke coming off his body.

• 28:08John Hopkins?

  It's a scene of unspeakable tragedy. George is the only survivor.

• 28:15John Hopkins?

  He drags himself through the devastation.

• 28:18John Hopkins?

  After crawling a short distance, he attempts to stand. As he straightens his leg, a jet of pain shoots up his spine. He crumples, and he doesn't fall down. He grits his teeth and staggers forward, determined to put more distance between himself and the inferno behind him.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  I started to realize to myself, I've got to get out of here. I didn't know where I was. At the time, I didn't know no one had found me. I didn't know that. Something told me, get down in the waste of our grass.

• 28:53John Hopkins?

  George takes stock of his surroundings. The plain has come to rest in a shallow basin just beyond a grove of eucalyptus trees. The valley is bordered by low ridgelines to the north and east. To the west and south, the land slopes away gently into rolling grass pastures, draped in a gauzy veil of mist.

• 29:16John Hopkins?

  George stumbles downhill, passing through the tall prairie grass, until he reaches a small, crooked tree. He collapses underneath its spindly branches, pulling his knees into his chest.

• 29:30Speaker 03

  I began to go into shock. My mind was kicking in. The adrenaline was pumping. I was trying to stay alert, using all my energy, my mental energy, to stay alert. This isn't happening to me. Why me? Please, God, don't let me die. I felt unlike anything I'd ever felt before. I had gone beyond being scared. I was in fear. It was right down to your core, your brain, your deepest emotions, your subconscious, that that kicks in because you know you're going to die.

• 30:06John Hopkins?

  The intense pain recedes to a dull throb, muted by the adrenaline coursing through his veins. George's consciousness flickers in and out, but he strains to stay awake. If he nods off, there is a high chance he'll never wake up.

• 30:24John Hopkins?

  Scenarios like this are what the military has prepared him for: the high stakes moments when the wrong move could spell the difference between life and death.

• 30:33John Hopkins?

  But George reaches even further back into his past, years before his Air Force training, back to his time as the star of his high school baseball team.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  Athletics teaches you physical toughness, it teaches you moral toughness, it teaches you mental toughness. When you get tired, and your legs get tired, and when you get a cramp in your side, whatever, you keep going. You train. You eat right. You get your sleep. You get your rest. Your focus. Your mental discipline. My parents, especially my mother, would always tell me, one of the main things she would tell me is when you start something, finish it. And don't ever quit, don't ever give up.

• 31:13John Hopkins?

  But as he lies there, clinging on to life, George feels his grip slipping.

• 31:20John Hopkins?

  He doesn't know it, but a rescue attempt is coming together. The rancher, John Davio, is at this very moment racing home to call the fire department. But when will they reach him? There is so little time.

• 31:35John Hopkins?

  George's inhalations grow weaker. The lucid moments between blackouts become less and less frequent. The light starts to fade from his eyes.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  My life started to appear to me like a holograph.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  Littleleg, ponyleg, mom, dad, my kids, my wife at the time, baseball, people I knew. And the constant theme was two things. Please, God, if you're there, don't let me die like this, all alone in this field, with no time to say goodbye to the people that I love. And this isn't supposed to be happening to me. I'm a pretty good officer. I'm a pretty good guy. I have a lot of friends. It became very personal, very real, that this was me in this field, and I was gonna die. I was dying.

• 32:36Speaker 00

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• 33:06Speaker 01

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• 33:25John Hopkins?

  It's about 30 minutes later.

• 33:28John Hopkins?

  George lies on his side curled up in the long grass. Rain falls softly through the branches, cooling his burned, blistered skin.

• 33:39John Hopkins?

  His breath is weak, barely audible, a thin trickle from his lips.

• 33:45John Hopkins?

  And then he hears it.

• 33:48John Hopkins?

  Voices.

• 33:51John Hopkins?

  George opens his eyes and with the last drop of energy he can muster.

• 33:56Speaker 03

  I forced myself on my feet. I turned toward the voices and I waved my arms over my head. I went, "Hey, over here, over here," and fell back down in a heap.

• 34:08John Hopkins?

  Did he really hear that? Or is his mind just playing tricks on him?

• 34:13John Hopkins?

  He listens carefully and there it is again, voices drifting up from the bottom of the hill and getting closer.

• 34:20John Hopkins?

  Moments later, a shadow falls across his face. Two firefighters stand there looking down at him with expressions of profound shock.

• 34:30Speaker 03

  I remember looking up through this. I was shaking so violently, the moist, wet prairie grass was shaking. I was shaking. Then I asked them, "What about my face? What about my face?" And the one firefighter, he responded, "Look at me. Oh my God."

• 34:46John Hopkins?

  The firefighters carefully lift George onto a gurney and carry him across the field to a waiting coastguard helicopter.

• 34:55John Hopkins?

  There is a gaggle of Air Force personnel outside the chopper, members of the base's search and rescue team. They must have been alerted as soon as the rancher John Davio placed his emergency phone call, giving them time to coordinate an airlift.

• 35:10John Hopkins?

  With the extent of his burns, George is in a race against the clock to treat his wounds and stave off deadly infection. From this moment on, every second counts.

• 35:31John Hopkins?

  It's mid-morning, Monday, May 4, 1970.

• 35:36John Hopkins?

  Flat on his back at the base medical center, George blinks up at the blurry outlines of the nurses and doctors as they examine him.

• 35:46Speaker 03

  Next thing I remember, I'm in the emergency room at Hamilton on a gurney, being placed on a cold, hard x-ray table, and it hurt like hell. But they were doing what they thought they could do to try to figure out what was going on with me.

• 36:00John Hopkins?

  George has done all he can for himself. Now it's up to the medical staff to treat his injuries before they slip past the point of recovery.

• 36:09John Hopkins?

  Once they've stabilized him at the base medical center, it's straight to the back of a waiting air ambulance, then off to a specialist burns unit at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

• 36:22John Hopkins?

  During the transfer, dosed up on strong painkillers, George drifts in and out of awareness. Brief snatches of sound, flashes of light, the smell of jet fuel.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  And then a squeal, squeal, turn, turn, back door open, heat, nothing. Then I'm in a room with people around me. I'm on a gurney. Ask me all sorts of questions, they're dressed in white, white bonnets, masks, male, female. "Who are you? What's your name? When were you born? Do you have children? What are your children's names?"

• 36:56John Hopkins?

  Amid the flurry of questions, a nurse lifts his shirt and begins snipping him out of his clothes. Soon, he is splayed out on the operating table, screaming in pain as his naked body is scrubbed down with a chemical-smelling soap. Then, a sharp prick in his arm. The warm, fuzzy feeling of morphine entering his bloodstream.

• 37:22John Hopkins?

  His eyelids troupe, and he sinks back into darkness.

• 37:34John Hopkins?

  Over the course of the next few days, George's life will be saved by a series of critical and lucky interventions.

• 37:42John Hopkins?

  His physician at San Antonio, Dr. Inge, will later tell him that the air ambulance that transported him from California to Texas was only available thanks to a stroke of good fortune.

• 37:53John Hopkins?

  The aircraft just happened to be refueling at nearby Travis Air Force Base. That was the only reason it was able to receive the call and pick him up so promptly.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  Our plane crashed about 08:30 Monday morning. That airplane just happened to be on the ground at Travis.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  Dr. Inge told me, months later, had I not got to the burn unit when I did, I would have died of the burns and the infections probably within 24 hours.

• 38:26John Hopkins?

  Then there's the extraordinary stroke of luck that saw cattle rancher John Davio take a different route home that morning. Had he not chosen to cut through the ravine, he might never have smelled the smoke, never seen the wreckage, never spotted George on the ground ablaze.

• 38:42John Hopkins?

  Without his timely arrival, George would have burned to death in minutes.

• 38:50John Hopkins?

  In the months that follow, George undergoes a long, difficult recovery in the burns unit at San Antonio.

• 38:57John Hopkins?

  As well as breaking his neck in the crash, he suffered burns to over 65% of his body, not to mention the numerous internal injuries.

• 39:07John Hopkins?

  But during his time in hospital, he will see wounded soldiers come through his ward, many of them bearing injuries far worse than his own.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  Eighty-nine days I was in the hospital, I saw some of the guys I knew that were alive one night and gone the next, Vietnam Marines, helicopter pilots, door gunners.

• 39:26John Hopkins?

  George's luck may run even deeper than first thought.

• 39:31John Hopkins?

  The sight of the soldiers' injured bodies leaves an impression on him. Watching them come and go stirs uneasy questions about their fate after they leave hospital and return to the world.

• 39:43John Hopkins?

  One day he poses this question to Dr. Inch.

• 39:47Speaker 03

  I said, "What happens to the guys when they leave here?" He said, "George, we don't know. We heal the body. We do not have time to heal the mind."

• 39:56John Hopkins?

  Once the scars form and new tissue grows over the damaged skin, healing the mind will be the next and harder phase of George's recovery.

• 40:10John Hopkins?

  As the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed 13 of his colleagues, he must grapple with an uncomfortable question: Why him?

• 40:22Speaker 03

  Over the years, I've learned through reading and my own exposure and my lessons and trying to find my purpose about survivor guilt. You have to identify it, you have to acknowledge it, and you have to deal with it. I know about post-traumatic stress. I've never been clinically diagnosed by a shrink, nor would I allow anyone to crawl inside my head. Because they don't understand. The only person who will understand me is another burn survivor.

• 40:49John Hopkins?

  Many veterans living with undiagnosed PTSD turn to self-medication to cope, sometimes looking for escape wherever they can get it.

• 40:58John Hopkins?

  Following the accident, George will face demons of his own, and he will be forced to find his own methods of overcoming them.

• 41:07Speaker 03

  You have to find ways to deal with the emotional pain. Prayer, food, intimacy, friends. Keep yourself busy. Teach, speak, write, exercise. Purpose. I've had a lot of people give me a lot of help. And I hope that I've tried to use my life for good, to live my life the way I'm supposed to live it, with purpose and to honor my friends, guys on the airplane, guys I knew in Vietnam, guys I knew in the burn and that didn't make it.

• 41:40John Hopkins?

  In the decades after the plane crash, George goes on to have a career as an author and motivational speaker. He says he hopes to make the world a better place by sharing his hard-earned insights. But even now, more than 50 years later, he is under no illusions that his recovery is complete. It is a journey he continues to navigate today.

• 42:02Speaker 03

  I've spoken over the years to a lot of groups of veterans, Afghanistan, Iraq, some Vietnam. Those guys understand. I understand them, they understand me. Stay around in a circle and cry, commiserate. We're all in this boat together. For 55 years, I have not been pain-free, especially the last 40. My neck was broken, I've had 45 surgeries, not as many as some of the other guys I know. Even today, in all honesty and candor, I'm that far from being a fallen-down drunk or an addict. I know that. I tried that. It doesn't work. So I have to believe in something that's bigger than me, and I do. I'm a man of faith, and God has worked, believe me. I know where I'm going.

• 42:48Speaker 03

  I'm not afraid.

• 43:00John Hopkins?

  Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet Andy and Tim Benford. In 1972, the British brothers arrange a day trip together to the Isle of Wight. Keen to experience a novel form of transport, they travel by hovercraft. But on the return journey across the waves, appalling weather conditions jeopardize the craft and threaten the lives of its 26 passengers. With the vessel suddenly overwhelmed, the Benfords will be wrenched apart and forced to enter simultaneous survival scenarios, each fighting for his life whilst unsure if the other is alive or dead. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen today without waiting and without ads by joining Noiser Plus.

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