PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Brit Mil Pilot - India - Crash - Maggots saved the chap!
Old 10th Aug 2020, 21:40
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Archimedes
 
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Swindonshire
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The story of Juliane Koepcke also features maggots - she was the sole survivor of a crash of LANSA 508 in the early 1970s. She sustained a couple of gashes in her leg and arms, and the maggots took a fancy to them. Her father was an eminent biologist who'd set up a jungle research station; he'd taught her some jungle survival techniques and she found her way to a fishing shelter where the maggots, having done their job of cleaning her wounds, were thanked by being doused in petrol used by the small boat which was at the shelter to get rid of them. She was found by the fishermen who took her back to their village and she was then transported to hospital.

Anyway - Javelin XH791 went down over the Ganges Delta in 1961; Master Navigator Tony Melton survived (his pilot, Flt Lt Ted Owens did not) but spent three days in the jungle before being recovered by a Pakistani AF Grumman Goose which landed on the river to recover him. He did sustain injuries, but whether he used maggots as part of his treatment for them, I don't know. There was a thread about him, or the incident (or possibly both) a while back. He died a couple of years ago, and there was an obit in the Telegraph, but that's almost certainly wedged behind their paywall.
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