I CHEATED DEATH TWICE IN ONE DAY; BBC researchers have trawled the archives for hair-raising material for their new real-life drama series In Extreme Danger. NIGEL BLUNDELL reports on three remarkable cases...

THE PILOT

PILOT Tim Ellison was a happy man. He always called the Harrier the "best jet in the world", and was about to make a landing in his unique plane.

Tim, 33, was one of the RAF's top guns and an ace at handling the fighter, which can take off and land vertically without a runway.

On this particular day, in 1992, he was demonstrating a single-seater version of the jet at RAF Wittering, Lincs, and had tossed a coin with another pilot to see who'd fly it first.

It was a fateful win. As Tim carefully kept his plane level, hovering 100ft above the ground, the engine cut out. Without warning, Tim and pounds 20 million worth of aircraft plummeted like a stone to the tarmac.

"It was only one and a half seconds from the engine stopping to me hitting the ground," says Tim. "I was in a no-win situation because there was no time to eject. The crash just seemed to tear me apart."

The impact, which set the plane ablaze, tore off Tim's safety straps. His head slammed into the instrument panel, his rib cage shattered and ripped into his lungs. He could not breathe and was suffocating fast. The pilot's shattered body was crumpled at floor level - and, because the canopy had blown off, rescuers at first believed he had ejected.

It took 15 minutes to extinguish the flames before horrified firemen found Tim still in the cockpit but barely alive. Doctors kept Tim in a drugged coma for ten days and his wife Amanda was warned that he might not pull through. It was only when he was moved to the spinal unit of Sheffield Hospital that he realised he was paralysed.

"A doctor was sent from RAF Wittering to tell me I should get any thoughts of walking - never mind flying - out of my head," he recalls. "This was exactly what I didn't want to hear. I had just had a new baby, had a family to look after and didn't know how I was going to put bread on the table. It was the wrong thing to say - I needed more hope than that."

But the doctor's blunt advice made Tim determined not to give up. "I thought what he said was rubbish but it acted as a spur. I felt he had no right to tell me what I could or couldn't do. I was in hospital for weeks, but then I made a big decision."

Paraplegics are barred from flying solo in Britain so, using an insurance pay-out, Tim went to a flying school in California. After two years there, he got a special airline transport licence - the first Briton, he believes, ever to have done so.

When he returned to England in 1994, he flew himself the 6,000 miles home in a specially-adapted plane. "It was a watershed in my life," says Tim, who now lives at Stamford, Lincs, with Amanda and their six-year- old son George.

"One of the first things I did was to go back to the scene of the accident. The control tower invited me to do a flypast. I swooped by - with one helluva lump in my throat."

Tim spent more of his insurance money buying himself a specially-adapted light plane, with which he hopes to start his own pilot business.

"I made a conscious decision not to hang on to my old life," says Tim. "I had to set off in a new direction. In a way I feel I have won because I'm already able to do something that five years ago I was told was impossible. I hope eventually to get a full UK flying licence."

THE CLIMBER

CLIMBER Frank Cannings had a double dose of barely-imaginable terror after cheating death TWICE in one afternoon. Frank, 25, was climbing a cliff on the island of Lundy, off the North Devon coast, when he slipped on a loose boulder, shot straight over the edge and crashed 80ft onto rocks. There he lay unconscious, with head injuries and a broken pelvis, while his fellow climbers raised the alarm.

A helicopter from RAF Chivenor, Devon, flew to the scene. But its 60ft winch cable was too short and it could only hover tantalisingly overhead while other climbers abseiled down ropes to reach the injured man.

As Frank began to regain consciousness, one of them gave him a shot of morphine. Frank's wife Pat, also a climber, comforted him for two hours as his friends bound his legs together with ropes and strapped him into a straitjacket of a stretcher made of bamboo poles and canvas, in which they eventually hauled him up the cliff.

Frank and Pat were put aboard the Whirlwind helicopter - but only five minutes into their emergency flight to Barnstaple Hospital, disaster struck again.

The aircraft developed engine trouble, the pilot cut the motor and it ditched into the sea. It immediately keeled over and began filling with water.

The pilot and co-pilot escaped through the cockpit window, leaving Frank, his wife and the winchman in the back - Frank still strapped in his stretcher.

As the helicopter sank beneath the waves, the winchman, Flight Sgt Geoff Parker, managed to force open a panel and helped get Pat to safety before bravely returning to save Frank.

He pushed the stretcher towards the hatch - but agonisingly it jammed in the swirling waters. The aircraft continued to sink swiftly with Geoff still inside, his escape route blocked by the stretcher. It was 25ft underwater before he managed to escape.

When the winchman reached the surface he could scracely believe his eyes - there, bobbling around in the water, was Frank!

Frank says: "I got called Houdini at the time because I was still tied up in the climbing ropes and had been securely strapped to the stretcher. The winchman swore he hadn't released me - and I certainly couldn't have done it myself. It seems that I somehow slid out of the straps, leaving the stretcher still jammed across the exit, trapping Geoff until he could remove it."

In the water, the helicopter pilot inflated a one-man dinghy and managed to bundle Frank and his wife inside. After 30 minutes, a second helicopter arrived to winch them aboard and fly Frank to hospital at last.

The crash, in August 1971, was the first RAF rescue accident involving a civilian and as a result of the inquiry which followed, new rules were laid down about ditching into the sea and the length of winch cables was increased to 300ft.

Frank, who now runs a management consultancy in Cheltenham, Glos,was out of hospital within eight weeks and back climbing in three months. He says: "I'll never forget how lucky I am but Geoff Parker, who won an award for his actions, has since died at a tragically early age. He was a man in a million."

THE HOSTAGES

PETITE Joan Davies describes herself as "a bit mouthy". But when confronted by a crazed gunman she buttoned her lip, bided her time - and became a heroine.

Joan was one of ten people held hostage by the madman when he terrorised a pretty Welsh Borders town.

Mark Williams was a 6ft tall, 17 stone psychotic prisoner let out on home leave while serving seven years for armed robbery. Within hours he attacked his foster mother, leaving her for dead, and was loose with a pistol on the streets of Hay-on-Wye.

Williams, 29, seized a shop assistant at gunpoint and marched him through the town centre looking for more hostages.

He chose a dental surgery. On this Friday afternoon in December 1993, ten people were in the surgery when Williams barged through the door with the terrified shop assistant in tow.

As he herded his hostages upstairs, one of the dentists hid behind a door and escaped to raise the alarm. Within minutes, police had sealed off the town.

Joan, a 47-year-old ex-Army nurse, was working as a hygienist when Williams burst in.

When he ordered her upstairs, Joan told him: "You can't do this - I'm in between two patients!"

She says: "He called me Mouthy and, since I'm only 5ft 4in I decided I'd better keep quiet and do what he told me."

Joan and the other hostages were barricaded in a second-floor room for 14 hours. At first he threatened to throw the hostages out of the window one by one.

Then he positioned them at the door so they would be first in the line of fire if police burst in. It was only when Williams fell asleep at 5am that the hostages saw their chance of escape.

"I was next to him as he began to doze off," says Joan. "I nodded to the man opposite who whispered 'We're not the A-Team!' But the girl next to me said, 'Go for it!'. I edged towards him - with my heart going bubump, bubump."

Joan grabbed the gun. The others pinned him to the floor. Joan pointed the pistol at the floor next to Williams' feet and fired twice - but it just went click-click. The gun was a fake.

Police then stormed the building - and Williams ended up back in jail after admitting charges of false imprisonment.

In Extreme Danger starts on BBC1 on Tuesday at 8.30pm

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Title Annotation:	Features
Author:	Blundel, Nigel
Publication:	The People (London, England)
Date:	Oct 11, 1998
Words:	1552
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