Thrilling story about little girl Juliane Koepcke -

The plane was struck by lightning. It plunges to the ground, shattering. Only Juliane Koepcke survived in horrible conditions .

It was 18 o'clock on December 24, 1971, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke and her mother, Maria von Mikulicz Radecki, a German zoologist and 90 passengers on the Lockheed Electra 4-propeller propeller plane. 508 of Lansa, Peru Airlines, flying from Lima, Peru's capital to Pucallpa city is located in the Amazon rainforest.

25 minutes later, the plane was struck by lightning. It plunges to the ground, shattering. Only Juliane Koepcke survived in horrible conditions .

Destiny flight

At 18:20, on the afternoon of December 24, 1971, Lockheed Electra 4-engine propeller plane number 508 of Lansa Airlines, Peru, with 92 passengers and 5 crew members taking off leaving Lima airport. . Juliane Koepcke recalls: ' I know it is not very safe to fly with Lansa because before that, they had 2 accidents. But because I was anxious to meet my father on Christmas Eve, and also because there were no other flights, my mother and I decided to go on the road . '.

Juliane Koepcke and her father received their high school diploma the day before the plane crashed half a month.

Born on October 10, 1954 in Lima, Peru, Juliane Koepcke was the son of Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke and Maria von Mikulicz Radecki, both German zoologists. They came to Peru to examine the life cycle and the habitat of wild animals in the tropical rainforest.

Two weeks before Lockheed Electra 508 crashed, Juliane Koepcke's father was working on tracking chips for some lemurs at his research facility in Pucallpa, Peru, in the Amazon, while she just graduated from high school. Juliane Koepcke's intention is that according to family tradition, she will also become a zoologist

The first 20 minutes of the flight, everything happened normally but by 4:45, Lockheed Electra had a big thunderstorm. Juliane Koepcke recounted: 'Suddenly, we were surrounded by an endless strip of dark clouds and in the wide range of dark clouds, continuous blue lights flashed. Sitting next to me, my mother's face turned gray because of the horrible shaking machine, especially when some luggage such as suitcases, bags, parcel, fruit and even Christmas cakes fell from the above compartment. head. Some passengers cried, there were prayers and people screamed in panic . '.

10 minutes later, through the glass door, Juliane Koepcke saw a bolt of lightning striking the engine outside the left wing of the plane. She said: ' My mother clutched my shoulder tightly. She said: 'Death is dead, my son'. That was the last sentence I heard from my mother. '

Being struck by the engine, the left wing of the Lockheed Electra caught fire. A few seconds later, it fell to the ground from a height of 3,200 meters. The body flew into pieces, scattered over an area of ​​about 1 square kilometer. The final feeling of Juliane Koepcke at that time was only: 'The wind blows like my ears and I don't know anything'.

Survive in terror

9 am the next morning, Juliane Koepcke opened her eyes. The first thing she realized was that she had lost consciousness for more than 12 hours on the wrist watch. In her lying position on the ground, Juliane Koepcke was still fixed to the chair with a seat belt tied around her abdomen. Thanks to this chair and rope she survived.

Juliane Koepcke from Pucallpa City Hospital went to the airport to Germany.

And it took nearly 15 minutes for Juliane Koepcke to remove the cord lock. She said: 'My left hand could not lift because my collarbone was broken, and my right hand had a big wound. My legs also have some wounds. My right eye was swollen, my glasses were everywhere, so everything I looked at was blurry. '

Came out of the chair, Juliane Koepcke yelled loudly to call her mother. Around her, the corpses of corpse were not intact. Juliane Koepcke's feeling was almost numb because for the first time, she saw many people die like that. She thought her mother might be one of them, but when she used a stick to poke at a woman's corpse, she found her toenails painted red. She said: 'I was immediately relieved because my mother never painted nails and toenails, but then I felt guilty for that thought.'

By noon, Juliane Koepcke found her mother with many wounds on her neck, chest and abdomen, located about 300 meters away from her. She said: 'At that time I knew the plane was left with only me. Based on the flight time, I guess I'm only about 50km away from Pucallpa city - where my father's research station is located. I hope the rescue teams will quickly find out, but when I look around, I see that the plane's location is a dense forest, the big canopy trees interlocking, obscuring the sunlight and below. the soil, the lower leaf layers form a tangled maze. So, I have to save myself before being saved . '.

At the end of the afternoon, Juliane Koepcke collected a few bottles of water, a pack of 50 candies, little apples and broken pieces of Christmas cake. At night, she slipped into a piece of an airplane shaped like a tortoise shell. She said: 'When the plane fell, I was only wearing a short skirt and a t-shirt, so I could not sleep because it was too cold and because of the mosquitoes, insects constantly clinging to open wounds on the skin , on my limbs'.

The next morning, Juliane Koepcke decided to find a way out of the forest. In addition to losing her glasses, Juliane Koepcke lost 1 shoe, so she had to take a victim's jacket, bundle it on her leg. With a victim's T-shirt, Juliane Koepcke forced it into a bag, containing the collected food. Taking a dry tree as a cane, Juliane Koepcke fumbled step by step until she met a small spring, where three chairs and three passengers died in a posture facing the mud.

Juliane Koepcke said: 'I have heard my father teach that:' If you get lost in the forest and if you find a stream, then follow it. Small streams will lead to large streams and large streams will flow into the river, where there are always people living on both sides of the shore 'so I decided to follow the stream'.

For the next five days, Juliane Koepcke heard the plane over her head many times, but she could not see it because the rainforest was too dense, and the rescue teams did not detect the location where Lockheed Electra 508 fell. Many times she had to face poisonous snakes and once, she had to travel far away from the stream because she saw alligators lying open waiting for bait. The most terrible thing was that the wound on her right arm began to have maggots, tiny white maggots, crowded together in a large hole of a coin.

In 1980, Juliane Koepcke returned to visit the plane.

So, the stench of the wound attracted the flies. Juliane Koepcke said: 'Although I used a tight piece of cloth, the flies still clung. I also tried soaking my arms in the spring water for an hour in the hope that the maggots would crawl out but they would snuggle even further. '

Exit death

The 9th day after leaving the body of Lockheed Electra 508, Juliane Koepcke came to the intersection of a stream and a river. There, she saw a small wooden boat with a motor but no people, tied to a coastal tree.

Waiting for the rest of the day to see no one, Juliane Koepcke thought about using this boat down the river in the hope of meeting a certain village. However, her health was so depleted that not only could she pull the cord used to start the engine, but even the rope was tied to the trunk, she could not open it.

She said: 'I lay right in front of the boat so that people could easily see me if someone passed by. For a moment, I suddenly remembered the story that once, my father used a kerosene to wash the dog's wound when it was infected. Trying my best, I crawled to the engine and used a piece of cloth, I opened the lid of the gas tank, dipped it in, squeezed every drop of gasoline onto the wound . '.

According to Juliane Koepcke, after fueling the wound, she counted 35 maggots crawling out. Later, when rescued, the Pucallpa City hospital picked up another 50 more.

On the morning of January 3, 1972 - 10 days after the plane crash, a group of lumbermen discovered Juliane Koepcke lying on a wooden boat. It took 7 hours against the Amazon, they took her to a wood processing factory in Tournavista district. After giving first aid and reviewing the papers in the wallet, they called her father. Next, a helicopter transferred her to Pucallpa City Hospital. Treatment there for a few days, her father took her to Germany.

Based on the instructions of Juliane Koepcke, on January 12, 1972, rescue teams found the plane's location. However, most of the victim's body was almost smashed by scavengers and insects - including the body of Maria von Mikulicz-Radecki, the mother of Juliane Koepcke. Investigations revealed that Lockheed Electra 508 was struck by lightning on the leftmost engine, resulting in a break in the fuel tank in the wing causing the aircraft to burn.

As for Juliane Koepcke, she survived because of the safety rope that held her to the chair, and the interlaced forest canopy partly reduced the force of falling. In addition, the layer of fallen leaves on the ground piled up for decades like a carpet, absorbing much of the impact when the chair and Juliane Koepcke fell.

Once fully recovered, as well as her parents, Juliane Koepcke followed the Biology branch at Kiel University. In 1980, she received her doctorate at Ludwig Maximilian University, Germany. Juliane Koepcke then went to Peru to study native bat species. It was not until 1997 that Juliane Koepcke returned to Germany and is currently in charge of the Tropical Rainforest Conservation Department in the city of Munich, Bavaria.

She said: 'For many years, I've always had nightmares. When I found my mother, I didn't know if she was alive or dead because when I called, I didn't see her react. If she was still alive then, her last days would be horrible. The pain of my mother's death and all the people on the plane are always hidden in the subconscious. The question of why I survived still haunts me, and I know he will follow me until the end of his life . '.

In 2000, director Werner Herzog made a documentary called 'The Wings of Hope - Wings of Hope' about the miraculous survival of Juliane Koepcke after the plane crash. It was a coincidence that Werner Herzog had booked tickets on that fateful flight, but at the end, due to work, he had to stay .