Something similar happened to my dad (USAF fighter pilot) in around 1961 or 62: He was test-flying a T-33 single-engine jet trainer assigned to his unit after it'd had repair work. The engine quit and wouldn't restart. He ejected, but his parachute didn't deploy fully (much the same as in the article) and he got tangled in the shrouds. He said a quick Hail Mary just before crashing head-first in a muddy, fresh-plowed field. The pilot of another plane in the area saw the crash and radioed the tower to send the meat wagon and not the ambulance, but my dad walked away with just a headache — and with his helmet split open like a melon. The impact apparently damaged his inner ear: five years later he started getting vertigo while aloft, and soon afterwards got medically grounded. (That meant he lost the extra flight pay and was reduced to his base pay, with four school-aged kids while stationed in the Washington DC area — to make ends meet, my mother had to go back to work as an RN [registered nurse].)

EDIT: What I remember was that when my dad crashed (see above), my mom came to get me from playing with the neighbor kids in their yard. Dad had called her from the flight surgeon's office and told her about the crash (very nonchalantly, she later said), and that he was OK. So six-year-old me blithely went on playing. Of course, my mom had been living with that possibility all their married life ....