Read the following passage and answer the questions set on it.
A remarkable story of personal survival ever published was that of an **** Corps pilot named Lieutenant Colonel William Rankin. It was on 26th July, 1959, that colonel Rankin was flying at an altitude of 47,000 feet over South Carolina, when the red -warning light flashed on in the pit of his crusader jet fighter plane. At the same time he felt jerking and shaking. After communication with a companion aircraft on his radio, Colonel Rankin decided to make an emergency exit from his falling plane by using the ejection seat.
It is all the more of interest and essential to point out that up to that moment, nobody had ever ejected from a plane flying at 500 miles per hour and at such an altitude. Outside the protection of his pressurised cockpit, the pilot had to face an air temperature of 70 degrees below zero, and a low atmospheric pressure which was liable to make his blood boil especially when he was wearing only flying suit, helmet, gloves and ordinary footwear. His parachute was designed to open automatically at 10,000 feet but as he glanced below, the colonel saw to his horror that he was falling straight into the centre of a huge, ***** thunder cloud. Powerless to do anything he gritted his teeth and awaited the sudden jerk of his opening parachute. As its reassuring canopy blossomed out above him, he felt another tremendous blast as the terrible forces of wind and hail inside the thunder cloud battered his body.
Instead of descending at a normal rate of about 1,000 feet per minute, a powerful up current of air sent him up, until he was floating on the clouds which enclosed him from all directions. Suddenly there was thunder and lightning. The next instant, he would again be flying upwards until his shoulders ached with the drag. Every second he feared his parachute would tear into pieces.
After tearing winds and crashing sounds, the Colonel gradually felt the turbulence lessening. Then, at last he caught a glimpse of green field below him. He had finally emerged from the giant thunder cloud which had held him prisoner for over half an hour. In fact, his descent, which would normally have lasted ten minutes, had taken forty minutes.
Answer the following in a word, a phrase or a sentence each.
(a) When did the incident mentioned in the passage take place?
(b) Where was Colonel Rankin flying over at the time of the accident?
(c) What warned Rankin about the calamity?
(d) Mention any one of the problems faced by him when he ejected out of the cockpit.
(e) Where did the colonel land straight into?
(f) What battered his body inside the thunder cloud?
(g) Add suffix to the word ‘power’ to make its antonym.
h) He caught a glimpse of green field below. Here the word ‘glimpse’ means
(i) caught sight of
(ii) couldn’t see anything
(iii) saw far of ****.
(i) How long was Rankin enclosed in the thunder cloud?
(j) The Colonel ‘gritted his teeth’. The idiomatic expression means
(i) to be afraid
(ii) to be cold
(iii) to be *****.
