I remember back in the early 70s seeing a flight safety film on the subject of ejections. IIRC it was taken at McD's plant in St Louis where the camera crew had been set up to film the first (?) flight of the UK F4M. This was duly recorded and they kept rolling as there was another F4 about to get airborne on an airtest, Israeli-destined, I think.
Mighty F4 rolls, plugs in burners and rotates. And rotates. And rotates until it has zero horizontal speed and barely a few knots vertically. At this juncture the two bemused occupants opt to cut short their journey and return to mother earth courtesy of the ejection-seats. All the while the camera is recording the events, the F4 finally succumbs to gravity and crashes tail-first, still within the airfield boundary. The rear-seater makes his entry back to the ground not 20 feet from the camera! Stunning. The reason behind the incident was, I think, due to the tailplane not being connected properly to the return position after initial rotate. It had flown the porevious day and been checked out. I'm sure some of the F4 drivers here can explain the details...
This was followed by a quasi-weapons deployment shot, with US commentary along the lines of "...Here we are expecting to see the effects of the re-tard bomb at low level. What we see in actuality is the succesful use of the Mk blah-di-blah seats from two F4s..." The Phantoms came steaming in at low-level to take out a bridge somewhere, but unfortunately the retard bombs didn't function as per the manufacturers intent, exploding on impact just beneath the undersides of their deliverers. What a waste!
I also seem to remember an RAF F4 in Germany in 1974/5 taking off from Bruggen, in a rush to make a slot-time on the ranges, the primary a/c having gone u/s on the pan and the crew switching to the back-up. Guy in the tower, NBing the take-off, makes the classic call "Alpha 45, your wings are folding...." Not sure what the crew responded, as they were soon to be seen floating earthwards on the end of their parachutes whilst one of Aunty Betty's finest investments makes and undignified return whence it came.
Anyone got the full story?
