Ejection Seats · 6:11pm Mar 13th, 2015
What's one thing that fighter jets have that no other airplanes have?
I was going for "an ejection seat" but if you think of something funnier, feel free to let me know.
Of course, Aston Martins come with ejection seats, too.
Getting clear of a damaged aircraft has been necessary since the first airplanes were built. Primitive systems to help the pilot bail out have been around since World War One, but it was in World War Two that actual ejection seats began to be developed.
A seat that throws the pilot clear of the airplane can be helpful if the pilot is injured or if the plane is going too fast or some other situation could prevent a safe bailout. The first successful ejection was by German test pilot Helmut Schenk flying a Heinkel He 280 prototype jet in January 1942.
Many early ejection seats were powered by compressed air. These days, rockets are typically used for more power and because they keep well.
Most sources claim that pilots typically experience an acceleration of about 12–14 times the force of gravity, although 1960s-70s era Soviet technology could apparently go up to 20–22 g. Rockets that (relatively) gradually accelerate are easier on the pilot than bomb-type ejection that immediately applies maximum force.
Regardless, it's still a rocket under your butt.
It might sound cool to ride a rocket chair, but trying to eject pilots while not hurting them has been kind of a problem. It's still a very violent process that throws you into an airstream that could be several hundred - or even thousand - miles per hour. I've read that about 90% of people survive ejecting, but about one in three get some sort of spinal injury. Bruises, scrapes, and broken bones are very common. You can break your arms when the wind catches them and flails them behind you. You can break your legs by hitting them on something on the way out of the plane. Your helmet and clothes might get ripped off by winds stronger than a hurricane. No matter what happens, you'll probably be a little shorter because of spinal compression.
Ejection seats have been much improved since the early models, but there's still possibility for improvement. The standard these days are zero-zero capable seats that provide enough boost to get the pilot up and out of the aircraft with enough time for the parachute to open even if the plane is parked on the runway (zero altitude, zero airspeed). Most ejection seats now feature retractable straps to hold your legs down to keep them from flailing. Some seats have vertical-seeking technology, automatically righting themselves even if the pilot ejects upside down at low altitude.
The fastest and highest ejection on record was during a test of an M-21, the interceptor version of an SR-71: Mach 3.25 at an altitude of 80,000 ft. The pilot survived, however the backseater unfortunately landed in water and drowned.
Pilots have successfully ejected from underwater a few times, usually when the plane rolled off the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Situations like this are why most ejection seats are theoretically able to drive straight through the canopy if need be.
And some aircraft, like the Harrier shown here, have explosive cord designed to break the canopy instead of blowing it off.
The world's biggest manufacturer of ejection seats is Martin-Baker, who will apparently send you a tie if you happen to use one of their products. They estimate that ejection seats have saved about 7,500 lives.
There are other systems for getting out of a plane. Some ejection seats in bombers eject downwards. Some airplanes eject a small capsule with the pilot inside. A few Russian helicopters blow the rotors off before ejecting.
I'd like to talk a little bit about the process of ejection and what the body goes through. A few weeks ago, I listened to a pilot tell about the time he had to eject. For the sake of the story, I'll call him Maverick and the guy who was in his backseat I'll call Goose. This is the narrative as best as I remember it.
The two of them were flying an F/A-18F Super Hornet during a training dogfight near Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada. They were practicing against another airplane.
During the fight, somehow the plane's fuel dumps got turned on. No one is really sure how it happened, maybe Maverick's sleeve brushed the control. During the low speed dogfight, the jet had slowed down to about fifty knots, and Maverick had the afterburners on to regain lost speed. The afterburners ignited the fuel that was dumping out. At the slow speed, the jet was still inside the cloud of fuel.
Their training partner in the other jet saw it happen and called, "You're on fire; eject, eject!"
Maverick didn't see any warnings on his instruments. He looked over his left shoulder and could only see the tip of the left wing and the tip of the left vertical stabilizer. Everything else was fire.
Goose later said that he looked back and saw a billowing cloud of fire coming right towards his face.
Maverick looked down between his legs to find the ejection handle. He reached for it, but Goose pulled his first. Maverick remembers feeling the ejection but not seeing it. He isn't sure whether he was knocked partially unconscious or if he had his eyes closed. The seat started to move upwards and he felt it sliding in the rails that guided it.
Goose did see the ejection. He saw the explosive bolts blow the canopy off and the glow of the rocket motors as the seat fired him out.
The next thing Maverick knew, he was floating under his parachute. At the altitude he'd ejected at, it took ten or fifteen minutes to get to the ground. He realized that he was going to land on a barbed wire fence and tried to steer clear. At the last minute, the wind pushed him away. Despite feeling like he was coming down slowly, he landed in a heap on the ground.
Both Maverick and Goose had only minor injuries. Despite that, it took several months before the accident report absolved them of blame. The sticking point was figuring out how the fuel dumps got turned on. They both eventually returned to flying.
Maverick was very lucky. Goose fired the seats as Maverick's head was bent to find the handle, yet somehow that seemed to fix a nagging neck pain that Maverick had had for a while. Very, very few people come out of an ejection better than before.
In the past I've met two other people who ejected, although I didn't get their stories. Both were understandably battered, but both returned to flying within a few weeks. One was landing on a carrier, but the jet dropped too low. The other was approaching a tanker and collided with another jet doing the same thing.
Let's walk through the process of an ejection. When you suit up to fly a jet, you put on a harness that straps around your chest and under your legs. When you sit in the seat, buckles fasten to the harness at your waist and at your shoulders. Your oxygen mask hose, radio wire, and g-suit hose connect to the seat.
You initiate the ejection different ways depending on the seat. Many have handles between your legs or on the side by your hip. Some still have handles up near your head. There may be more than one type of handle for redundant backup.
Once the rockets are expended in an ejection, the metal seat shell falls away, leaving behind the seat pan strapped to your butt and the parachute strapped to your back. The seat pan contains an oxygen bottle and survival equipment for when you land. Assuming your parachute opened, you'll have some time to assess the situation while you drift down and get ready to land. Most parachutes descend at 15-20 feet per second, so if you eject from thousands of feet in the air, you'll have a few minutes. These parachutes are typically round in shape and have limited steering, a lot less than recreational parachutes.
If you're coming down in water, before landing, take off and discard the gear you won't need. For example, don't try to breathe through the oxygen mask when the hose is in the water. If you're landing on solid ground, you may want to keep as much gear as possible on to cushion your fall. Your seat pan may have opened to dangle your life raft beneath you.
Try to roll when you land. As soon as possible after landing, unhook the parachute. No matter where you land, the wind could drag you around.
You survived! Now you'll just have to figure out how to evade the enemy that's trying to capture you. Sorry, that's another blog.
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Interesting. Those are some powerful rockets.
Apparently a pilot can only go through so many ejections in their career before they are giving a paid retirement
Well, that's awfully nice of them.
Hell with the tie... send me to a free dinner or two at Arby's!
Have you ever considered a separate blog for these things? I know people would read them. Maybe a column in a military bronies newsletter. If that's a thing.
Ah. So that's what those strange lines are on the Harrier canopy.
Speaking of Martin-Baker, they apparently told Textron that it would cost them several million dollars to develop a new ejection seat for their Scorpion aircraft based off of the cabin dimensions Textron gave them. So Textron expanded the cabin a bit so it could fit an off-the-shelf ejection seat.
That's a very interesting and relevant topic, thanks for sharing with us. Things like these make me just a little bit happier that I didn't end up flying fighter jets. Here's to having an uncompressed spinal column!
Volare: I've got a big-assed bone to pick with Martin Baker!