Ah, so he lost his static system while in the soup, became confused, and
used that old WW II era instrument letdown:

needle, ball, ripcord.

Seems an awfully expensive alternative to just opening the alternate static
port. I can certainly see it happening, though. It is easy during training
to neglect these emergencies. Guess what emergency procedure I am going to
be hammering on my students today?

I wonder if during all the confusion he didn't manage to tumble one of his
gyros.