In The Arms Of God The Tom Smoak Story – Surviving A 15,000 Foot Fall From An Airplane Without A Parachute!
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By Charles Micheals
In The Arms Of God The Tom Smoak Story - Surviving a 15,000 Foot Fall From an Airplane Without A Parachute!
Thomas G. Smoak Inducted in 1992 into the Virginia Aeronautical Historical Society Hall of Fame
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© 2012 Charles J. Micheals
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: Pending
First Printing 2012 (Not for Sale) Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission. NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® and NIV® are registered trademarks of Biblica, Inc. Use of either trademark for the offering of goods or services requires the prior written consent of Biblica US, Inc.
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Dedication To the men and women who have given their lives to the aviation work of Bible translation.
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Chapter 1
The Unforgettable Day On March 31, 1960, a B-47E Stratojet bomber aircraft from the 384th Bomb Wing (Strategic Air Command), 545th Bombardment Squadron headed to Houston, Texas for routine radar bombing practice. It didn’t make it to Houston. At 6:08 AM it exploded while flying at 15,000 feet over Little Rock, Arkansas. The six engines of the aircraft screamed and whistled as they fell to the ground and burst into flames. Three members of the crew and two people on the ground in Pulaski Heights were killed.
(Photo Courtesy of The Arkansas News)
Some residents thought the explosion was due to an aircraft creating a sonic boom. Other thought a tornado had struck or that the Russians had launched a nuclear strike. Witness Dale Harris recalls, "It was such a terrific explosion that it almost knocked me out of bed. I thought the whole city was on fire.
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That's what it looked like. All you could see was smoke and fire. I thought we might have been bombed. I wasn't sure if it was over, either."
Wreckage was scattered over a large area with aircraft debris recovered from the Little Rock Country Club to North Little Rock's Riverside Elementary School. The impact area made a large deep crater at the intersection of Maryland and Summit streets measuring 35 feet across and 6 ½ feet deep, which quickly filled with water from a broken water main. A natural gas line was also crushed, and those substances combined with jet fuel, magnesium, and other white hot metals formed a bubbling, fiery lake which burned for several hours.
As a result fire broke out in two homes and an apartment building collapsing due to the impact. Additional damage was located near the Colonial Court area. The aircraft nose was found in the nearby Allsopp Park. In all over one hundred homes were damaged, including the First Church of the Nazarene. It took bystanders little time to loot the damaged Stacy's Grocery and Safeway store on Battery Street. Killed in the explosion were 37 year old Captain Herbert Aldridge, 43 year old Lieutenant Colonel Reynolds Watson, 25 year old Staff-Sergeant Kenneth Brose, and civilians Alta Lois Clark and James Hollabaugh. The 26 year old crew member, 1st Lieutenant Thomas G. Smoak (photo below) survived, parachuting to safety.
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Smoak later recalled the events that led to the crash: "I didn't sense anything was wrong. I was writing on a clipboard keeping track of statistics that you keep with an airplane during flight. I finished what I was doing, and I looked out the window to relax for a minute. But what I saw surprised me. We were in a deep, descending turn. Much to my surprise, it was a gentle descent. I didn't even feel it. You always feel a turn, but for some reason, I didn't feel this turn.”
“The first time I knew something was wrong was when I noticed that the horizon was at a crazy angle. Since Aldridge was flying the plane, it was up to him to correct the problem. He was a highly experienced pilot. He'd been in World War II, the Korean War and had been my teacher. All I could see was the back of his helmet. It appeared as though he was looking down. He could have been looking at charts, bombing ranges or many other things. The plane was on autopilot. I yelled through our radio, 'Hey, what's going on?' He didn't say anything. His response told me he was working on the problem. If I had been sitting next to him, I could have seen what was going on. But I was behind him. I knew we had to get out of this quick, but I never thought it was a serious problem. I never thought we were going to die. I just knew we were supposed to be going straight and we weren't. I still didn't panic. I never thought we were going to crash. I was watching intently what the pilot was doing from where I was sitting. He was the expert. He was the professor.”
"I could feel the G-forces as he was handling the controls. In that process, the airplane either was overstressed and broke apart because we were so heavy, or it simply exploded. I don't know what happened. It happened so fast. We were literally sitting on the tanks. Anytime you have a fire on an airplane, you're in trouble. But in this case, I was sitting in the fire. Once it exploded, I couldn't see anything. I was dying. It was a horrible experience -- I was burning alive. I did not try to pull the ejection seat. You're trained to do that in your sleep. You pull up your right hand and pull the handle. You can do this in seconds. But I wasn't thinking. I was dying. I was burning alive and praying to God that it would be over with soon. The only thing I thought was this is how you die in an airplane. It's too horrendous, especially when you realize there is no way out. There is no 'What's the next emergency procedure?' because there isn't any. You're screaming at the top of your lungs as you die. ... [Aldridge] did pull his ejection seat, which blew off the canopy covering us, and he was out of the airplane."
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A second explosion ejected Smoak from the plane. "I felt great. It was so quiet and still, and I was so glad to be out of that thing. The first thing I did was look around for my friends, but I didn't see any other parachutes. I was devastated. Then I looked up and saw that part of my parachute was gone and the rest of it had holes in it that were burning. It looked like a piece of paper that a child would fold and cut, except it was burning. I realized that I was descending too fast and, once again, I went from thinking that I had no more real problems to realizing I was going to die. It was a devastating moment. Fire and dying, then out and safe. Now, I was going to die again. Because my chute had so many holes in it, I couldn't control it. I could see the downtown area, I saw the river. I passed all that. I was over an area of residential homes. I had no control. I was just there for the ride."
Smoak fell into the yard of Jimmye Lee Holeman, a registered nurse, at 500 North Martin St.. Tom Smoak remembered later, "She had two trees that went between her driveway, and I went between them. She came and helped me, brought me a blanket and cared for me." He was admitted to the Arkansas Baptist Hospital with burns and other injuries and placed under heavy sedation. Tom's full recovery from the injuries took 20 operations and two years.
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Chapter 2
The Day Of Miracles The morning of March 31 for Tom began as it did each day.
He awoke at 3:15 AM to prepare himself for
the day’s flying activities. Tom slipped quickly out of bed so as to not disturb his wife Betsy and took some time to read from the Bible. Tom picked up a card on which he wrote a Bible verse which he intended to memorize during the day from Psalm 37: 23,24, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand.” (KJV)
Opening the closet to get dressed, Tom looked at his two flight suits. One was a nylon suit the pilots preferred to wear. The other was a heavy, bulky fire resistant suit which was awkward to wear. Tom instinctively picked the awkward suit and put it on for the flight. It was the suit God has prepared for him to wear on this day.
The flight started off routine as any flight would, and then almost without notice the aircraft lurched and began to vibrate. Then the aircraft exploded and Tom soon found himself drenched with tons of burning fuel and burning alive. The explosion ripped off his helmet and his whole head was enveloped in flames. His hands were shreds of burning, melting flesh and the flight suit was seared and melted across his knees and shoulders.
As Tom awoke, he was falling through the air, with this body burning along with the strings of the parachute. The fire in the cockpit had burned away his parachute pack and the force of the explosion and wind had ripped his chute open and sucked him out of the aircraft. Feeling no pain as he descended, Tom realized he was not floating to earth, but hurtling to earth with a parachute full of holes and he was burning up!
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Mrs. Jimmye Lee Holeman, a nurse, heard the explosion and ran outside to see what had happened. She soon spotted Tom coming down at a great rate of speed. She screamed realizing he was going to fall onto her concrete driveway and then began to pray.
The summer before the Holemans had debated cutting down the two identical trees that spanned their driveway. They decided to let them stand.
As Tom descended to the house, his parachute whistled between the trees on its way with Tom to the concrete driveway. However, the screaming parachute snagged the top of both trees. The parachute silk lines and Tom’s body were the exact length as the trees!
As he flashed through the limbs, the swaying of the limbs gave a gentle bend just enough to allow him to gently land on the driveway and then quickly straightening him up into an upright position.
When the Holemans arrived at the front of the house expecting to see a smashed airman they were astonished to see Tom standing on his good foot, badly burned but very much alive. Tom quickly gave them instructions on how to unfasten the parachute harness.
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Chapter 3
The Call To Missionary Work Tom Smoak believed God saves to allow us serve Him and that every step, including the tragedy on that day in Little Rock were ordered by the Lord. God indeed upheld Tom by His mighty right hand and it was only a few short years later in 1962 that Tom and Betsy and their six children found themselves serving as JAARS pilots with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Lomalinda, Colombia!
Tom Smoak (center) and Paul Witte prepare for early morning takeoff in Andoke Land, Colombia
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The Smoak family served in Colombia for 20 years flying on and out of remote airstrips in Colombia and from the day they joined Wycliffe they dedicated the rest of their lives to giving God’s Word to the people in Colombia and around the world. During their years in Colombia they often also helped other mission agencies and missionaries. On one of those flights in January 1983 Tom’s aircraft went down in a remote area of Colombia and he had to be airlifted back to the States where they sought specialized medical care after a brief stay in a hospital Bogota.
1973 – Tom Smoak with the DC-2 and another JAARS Pilot Roy Minor in Colombia (Photo Courtesy of “Angel Flight – MidAtlantic” authored by Suzanne Rhodes)
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Chapter 4
Life After Missionary Service After returning to health, Tom and Betsy serve at the JAARS Center in Waxhaw, NC and assisted in many aviation related activities. They also assisted in new missionary orientation. Betsy died on February 5, 1997 after serving for 35 years with Wycliffe. Tom retired from Wycliffe in 2000 after serving 38 years with Wycliffe and he now lives in Richmond, VA area.
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Bibliography Buckingham, Jamie, Into The Glory, Plainfield, New Jersey, Logos International, 1974, 60. Rhodes, Suzanne, Angel Flight – Mid-Atlantic, Chicago, IL, Arcadia Publishing, 2008, 7. Ibid., 8. Ibid., 21. http://honors.uca.edu/wiki/index.php/B-47_Stratojet_crash http://www.arkansasties.com/Pulaski/Structures6/PlaneCrash1960.htm http://www.oldstatehouse.com/pdf/91Fall.pdf http://www.oldstatehouse.com/educational_programs/classroom/arkansas_news.aspx?issue=32&page =1&detail=431 http://fultonhistory.com/newspaper%202/Auburn%20NY%20Citizen%20Advertiser/Auburn%20NY%20C itizen%20Advertiser%201969.pdf/Newspaper%20Auburn%20NY%20Citizen%20Advertiser%201969%20%200299.PDF
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About The Author
Charles
Micheals is a native of Michigan and lived the first thirty years of his life there, eventually
working in the grocery industry. In 1985 his wife Barbara and their four small children joined Wycliffe Bible Translators and moved to the country of Papua New Guinea (PNG) where they worked with the internationally known non-profit linguistic organization, SIL International (formerly the Summer Institute of Linguistics). Charles served in a variety of administrative roles in PNG, including several years as the Chairman of the SIL PNG Job Evaluation and Wage Review Committee and on the SIL PNG Executive Committee.
During their 15 years of service in PNG, Bible translation work was completed in 67 languages and over 100 additional Bible translation projects were started. Today, almost 180 language communities, representing 1.8 million people in PNG have access to the Scriptures in their own languages.
In 2000, Charles and Barbara moved back to the USA and Charles served for several years as the Regional Director for Recruitment for Wycliffe, living in the Chicago, Illinois area. In 2004 they moved to Orlando, Florida where Charles served for six and one half years as the Vice President for Recruitment Ministries for Wycliffe. He currently heads up Wycliffe’s Management Recruitment Department and speaks at various mission conferences and colleges each year. Barbara coordinates several Wycliffe short term mission trips each year.
Charles holds a BS degree in Food Distribution from Western Michigan University and a MA degree in Organization Management from Dallas Baptist University. He served on the Board of Directors for The Finishers Project, a non-profit mission dedicated to helping people in the second half of life find places to serve in missions. He has also been involved in helping create and develop Mission Teach, a ministry dedicated to helping place teachers in MK (Missionary Kid) mission schools around the world and 14 | P a g e
Military Believer, a growing ministry dedicated to helping military personnel who are leaving the military, find opportunities for service in global missions.
Charles has also authored a number of articles about the work of SIL in PNG and other historical articles about life in the Aiyura Valley in PNG. (http://issuu.com/cbmicheals/docs)
Both Charles and Barbara are members of Saint Andrew’s church in Sanford, FL and are involved in a variety of church activities there. Charles serves as an elder at the church.
However, they are still
members of Second Christian Reformed Church, in Kalamazoo, Michigan which is the church that commissioned them for their work with Wycliffe.
All four of their children are actively supporting
missions and church ministry work. Three of their four children are serving with Wycliffe around the world.
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