I've seen all sorts of stuff fly off of planes. Your story reminds me of one of the funniest "abandon ships" I've ever seen. At a huge giant scale fly-in, I was spotting for a bud of mine. He lost an elevator half in flight and proceeds to yell at the top of his lungs "Mayday! - Emergency!" He immediately lines up for an emergency landing, and then his pilot figure bailed ship... Plane was landed with out further incident, but without the pilot figure or canopy. As for the pilot figure, his chute didn't open. He would have been better off riding it out. Cheers!