大象传媒

Captain John Herbert Hedley, who was born in North Shields, served in the Royal Flying Corps during World War One and in early 1918 claims to have fallen out of his aircraft when his pilot put the plane, a Bristol Fighter, into a steep dive.

Gunners had to stand up to fire their guns and there are a number of incidents of airmen coming out of their cockpits. But what makes Captain Hedley鈥檚 story extraordinary is that he claimed that, after falling several hundred feet, he landed on the tail of the aircraft as it came out of the dive and crawled back into the cockpit to safety.

After the war he immigrated to America and in the late 1920s enjoyed considerable success as an after dinner speaker giving a lecture entitled 鈥淩ambling Through the Air鈥� in which he told the story of his survival.

Location: North Shields, Tyne and Wear NE30 1DR
Image: Advert of Captain Hedley鈥檚 lecture, courtesy of the Redpath Chautauqua Collection, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City