Inadvertent ejection.

[turnback]

Hi all,

I'm looking for info. on inadvertent ejections, does anyone have a website or other sources that may prove useful?

Cheers,
Turnback

[Pontius Navigator]

US SAC Combat Crew magazine, probably 67-69, carried an article on inadvertent ejections. In this case 3 from B52s.

All occurred during low level oil burner flights. All involved the tail gunner. The same tail gunner was involved in two and his best friend in the other.

In one case his intercom had become unplugged. He reconnected in time to hear one navigator say "What do you think they'll do?" and the response "I think they'll go down."

The navigators discussion on stock and share prices was interrupted by a BANG.

I don't recall the details of the other two cases but I think there was a case of moderate to severe turbulence at low level and I believe the ride in the back of a Buff was exciting to say the least.

[Maple 01]

Hmmm, I wonder if 'Wedge' is still in……he's the FC expert:ouch:

[Wyler]

Oh No, not Wedge again.

Turnback.

Some time ago a Fighter Controller was taken for a back seat in a Hawk. Not wishing to go into detail he ended up in the Oggin whilst the pilot landed the Hawk. Lots of paperwork to follow. He insists the seat went off and...well....I'll leave it to others....:rolleyes:

[SirToppamHat]

Been touched on before here:

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?p=2169420&highlight=hawk#post2169420

See post numbers 77, 89, 91 and 93.

STH

[jimgriff]

The one bang-seat incident that sticks out though was one which happened aboard the Russian ASW Carrier Minsk (if memory serves). The background is that the designers at Yakovlev, when creating the Forger, realised that, under some circumstances, it may be a difficult plane to eject from. They therefore developed an automatic system, called Eskem, to trigger the bang-seat if certain pitch, yaw and roll parameters were exceeded in the takeoff and landing flight phases.

The incident aboard Minsk revolved around an occaision where Eskem was called upon to perform as advertised. A Yak-38 had suffered a mechanical casualty. I have a dim memory of hearing that the starboard lift-jet failed on landing sending the aircraft into a sudden and violent roll in that direction. Unfortunately for the pilot he had elected to land approximately amidships on the carrier, the easiest spot usually as its the centre of the vessels roll, and to his immediate starboard was the superstructure.

The captain of the vessel, standing on the bridge at the time was apparently well placed to first see one of his fast-jets get into trouble then see it roll clockwise and promptly shoot its pilot out straight at the bridge. I cant recall whether the pilot survived or not but I do remember that the abandoned aircraft just made it over the edge of the deck and narrowly missed plowing into the amassed missile batteries on the vessels foredeck.

This story has done the rounds a bit but i'm sure that in essence it's true.

[jimgriff]

Myself and a fellow QA inspector were performing a pre-flight inspection of an F-4G prior to a Functional Check Flight (FCF). A crew chief and his partner were changing a battery on another F-4 only two jets away from us. Now for those of you who remember the F-4 days, you know that a battery change on an F-4 is no easy task, requiring that the seat be in the lowest position, the rudder pedal being folded forward and the #7 circuit breaker panel being removed ( I know that this was not the case in the earlier versions of the F-4, when the rocket motor initiator was located under the seat, attached to a lanyard to the floor of the acft and required that the seat be removed. On the later versions of the seat, a TCTO moved the initiator to the left side of the seat, and the peso did not require removal from the cockpit) Anyway, the battery was inadvertently drained through the night, and the seat was in the up position. As you old timers will know, the F-4 will not accept external power with a dead battery. Egress was called to remove the peso, and the crew chief and his partner pressed on with the battery change. With some time and patience, the battery was R2'd and the crew chief wanted to now lower the seat to make the rest of the battery install go easier. Now for those of you who have not worked the "G" model F-4, the wiring harness to the #7 c/b panel was longer than usual due to the sex change from from "E" to "G" configuration. This allowed the #7 circuit breaker panel to be set on the floor of the acft, while still attached to the cannon plugs attached to it. While sitting in the seat, he had his assistant apply power to the jet with a -60 power unit and lower the seat . Little did he know that he was pinning the c/b panel between the bottom of the seat and the floor. The scene now is that he is sitting on a seat that is on top of a live panel, which then proceeds to torch a hole in the rocket motor package. Needless to say the seat fired after a hole was burned through the rocket motor. When this thing went it scared the wholly living **** out me and my partner. The first thing that we thought was that maybe EOD was blowing up some stuff somewhere on base ( that was a pretty common occurrence at Nellis ). We both looked up to see an ejection seat in the air with the drogue chute just starting to deploy. I thought to myself that I hoped to Christ that no one was in it. The seat was at least as high as the flood lights that light up the flightline of most Air Force bases, at least 100 ft. high. The seat and occupant both came down very rapidly, with the seat landing on the wing of the next acft, and the crew chief on the ground. I and my partner were the first ones on the scene, and after declaring a ground emergency to maintenance control, we realized that there was nothing to do except cordon off the area and wait for the ambulance to arrive. As we all know, almost all ejection seat accidents are always fatal, and this was no exception. The crew chief was killed in this accident. Then entire rear canopy was taken out and broken into several pieces. Once the area was cleared,and egress technicians were on the scene, we had realized what had happened. Prior to this, myself and my QA buddy along with other mechanics, were trying to figure out what had happened. The seat landed on the wing of the next acft. lying on its' side, partially covered by the drogue chute. We counted all of the safety pins and the "D" ring guard was in the up "safe" position. How the hell did this thing go off? Anyway, the investigation had revealed that it was in fact the #7 circuit breaker panel that had burned a hole into the rocket motor pack that caused the seat to fire. I had always heard about ejection seat accidents, but never thought that I would be witness to one. It has really given me a new sense of respect for the ejection system, a system that most of us maintainers take for granted these days. I always do my "seat safe for cockpit entry" prior to getting into the cockpit of any acft.

Story by Brian Kidd, jet engine mechanic in the USAF, who spent 3 years as a Quality assurance (QA) inspector with the 561st fighter squadron at Nellis AFB, Nevada, from August 1992-95.

[jimgriff]

The pilot had selected attitude hold on the auto-pilot of his A-7E so that he could raise the radiation thermal shield that had been lowered to simulate instrument conditions. As he attempted to raise the fiberglass shield following laydown release of the mk-106 at 10,000', his elbow inadvertently hit the end of the 6" long canopy release lever and unseated the canopy.

At about 300kts IAS, the wind immediately took the canopy off and the thermal shield impacted his helmet, knocking him unconscious and apparently striking the upper ejection handle. Ejected from the aircraft, he came to just prior to impacting the ground a few miles north of the target at NAS Fallon NEV. The LTjg pilot was shaken but physically unharmed by his adventure.

Unfortunately, his chase safety observer was so busy attempting to spot the bomb hit for scoring purposes that he lost site of the mishap aircraft and missed the whole thing. In the meantime, the aircraft continued northbound with enough fuel on board to make it into Canada and create and international incident.

The a/c was tracked by Oakland Center until it was lost in the shadow of a mountain around Provo Utah. Everyone "assumed" it crashed on the snow-covered mountain. Local skiers and campers in the area all said they heard the aircraft at tree-top level and knew the crash site had to be near by.

Well, weeks went by, then months and the squadron left on an extended combat deployment to SouthEast Asia aboard the USS Kitty Hawk. Over a year later, after they returned from Vietnam, the Aircraft was finally located. It had not crashed into the mountain after all; rather, it had managed to skirt the back side of the mountian and was not reacquired by the radar operator as it continued in attitude hold on a southeasterly course until it ran out of JP and made a relatively soft gear-up, out-of-fuel landing in a remote area in Utah.

Story courtesy CDR. Russ Pearson USN (Ret), Squadron Aviation Safety Officer, VA-195 1971

[jimgriff]

A young Somali boy was poking around a Somali Air Force hangar shortly after the military had abandoned its base at Mogadishu. Chaos was running rampant in the area, as feuding rebel warlords were fighting for control, starvation was prominent and the UN peacekeeping force had not yet arrived. The curious Somali teenager hopped up into the cockpit of one of the abandoned Mig 15s in the hangar and undoubtably proceeded to fulfill his fantasies as an aspiring fighter pilot. Unfortunately, he encountered more realism than he desired when he pulled the ejection handles and immediately found out that the seat was one item in the dysfunctional aircraft that still worked. He proceeded to get the ride of his life as the seat fired, and a few milliseconds later he was airborne and rapidly heading toward the wild blue yonder. Unfortunately, there was a hangar roof between him and the sky, and he never took the opportunity to strap into the seat as he was playing aspiring fighter pilot. As he approached the hangar roof, his body gradually drifted apart from the seat and achieved sufficient lateral separation to avoid coming to a rapid halt as the seat impacted an overhead 12" steel girder support beam, putting a serious deformation in it. Our flying Somali superboy fared only slightly better, as his body was undoubtably bashed and shredded as it punched a hole through the sheet roof and landed on the tarmac outside the hangar.

Above three stories from the ejectionsite.com

[jimgriff]

A navy mate described a case of mis-communication. Allegedly a Sea Vixen mate was involved in some fishy fun with his jet when something didn't go as he'd intended. "Oh $hit" quoth he. Wherupon there was a load bang from the coal hole and he was astonished to see his looker (for all our non Royal Navy fans = Observer) disappearing upwards courtesy of Martin Baker! Equally perplexed was the observer, as he saw one of HM's Vixens pootling happily along with just the awkward sight of a bang seat rod poking up into the slipstream! There was a wonderful cartoon which showed the looker suspended under his parachute musing "$hit - I thought he said 'Eject'! No he didn't - he said 'Oh $hit'. OH $HIT!"

[jimgriff]

Well, I'm not posting any more until someone else comes up with some answers.!!!:O

[4Greens]

The early Seahawk in service in the RN had a number of inadvertant ejections. This was caused by the seat riding up a little and this triggered the system.

[NoHoverstop]

The one bang-seat incident that sticks out though was one which happened aboard the Russian ASW Carrier Minsk <snipped bits>
This story has done the rounds a bit but i'm sure that in essence it's true.

Since the Yak-38 had lift engines arranged in a longitudinal pair on the centre-line I would regard jimgriff's story as suspect. If any of the engines failed in/near the hover the jet would pitch nastily but shouldn't roll. Yak wanted to make a single-engined aircraft but had to accept that an engine as good as the Pegasus wasn't going to be available from within the USSR. Instead they had to go for the layout they did and they had to include auto-ejection as a fundamental part of the design to make it "acceptably safe". When I sat in the jet (soon after the locals had had an entertaining few days using tanks to set fire to their parliament building in Moscow) the system could be enabled/disabled by the pilot. For some time in service, pilots refused to enable it and their bosses declined to make it mandatory. Then a senior bod bought it in circumstances where the auto-eject would have saved him. Henceforth SOPs were changed. Or so I was told by the bloke who designed it.

I met someone who'd departed from his aircraft courtesy of the auto-eject system. He had the video to prove it. Even watching it through my vodka goggles I thought it was a jolly spiffing film to have to back up a "there I was flying my jet and minding my own business when.." story. The jet had a lift engine failure in the hover but he was already out before any pitching was even apparent on the (shot from the ground) video. The jet was upside-down on the ground about two seconds later.

[Milt]

Then there was young Tom Stoney minding his own business in a RAAF Meteor 8 out of Iwakuni in Japan circa 1951. Suddenly he found himself being confronted by his aircraft as it unsuccessfully tried to recover him to its boosom!

Then a couple of RAAF unfortunates down under tried a turn back after engine failure in a Vampire. Their wheels up across rough ground caused both seats to fire. A strong canopy contained the ejections and the seat rails came out through the bottom.

[threepointonefour]

... I've had one or two ... can't say the wife was too pleased.

[L Peacock]

Never been inadvertant, just a bit premature somtimes. Practised the squeeze technique though and everything's fine now.:ok:

[Krystal n chips]

What about the possible urban myth --albeit one that we had drummed into us as apprenti.--concerning the guy working in the cockpit of a Hunter and who, allegedly, got between the stick and the seat when he fired the seat?.
And survived.

Always wondered about this incident, if it actually transpired etc. or was it just one of those enduring myths that migrate into "reality" over time ?.

[The Rocket]

I heard that one years back, and that it was a Lightning cockpit,

Probably like the Vulcan, Shack, Victor......... doing an approach on a US carrrier

[M609]

A Austrian Defence Attache managed to eject himself from a Swedish Air Force SK-60 jet trainer som years ago. Was reaching to adjust his seat straps, and inadvertently pulled the backup "T" ejector handle between his legs. (Main handle is overhead) PIC piloted his now convertible SK-60 to a safe landing.
Cannot recall what happened to the unlucky attache, but he survived.

The brief for ride-along passengers today include a "whatever you do, do not reach between your legs in flight" lecture.

[jimgriff]

Here you are Krystal.......

The following story was witnessed and verified to the author and was apparently reported in "Airclues" the RAF flight Safety magazine.

Webmaster's note: There might be just a small amount of Urban Myth about this one!



Date: Early 1960's

Place: RAF Wattisham, England.



A rather chubby instrument fitter wearing a winter 'cold weather' anorak was working in the cockpit (delving in the space behind the instrument panel) of a Hawker Hunter. The canopy had been removed for servicing. Suddenly he heard the click of a seat sear being removed and a clockwork mechanism (main gun firing mechanism?) running. The seat ejected and went through the hanger roof amongst a clatter of dropped tools and strange toilet like smells.

The techies were surprised to hear a muted "Get me out of here!" coming from the smoking Hunter.

The fitter had wriggled into the space in front of the seat, under the instrument panel and was now firmly wedged into the very small space.

The duty crash crew had to be called to cut him out and in so doing totalled the aircraft.

Subsequent tests showed that there was no way that the fitter could get himself into the space available....but he did!

[pulse1]

On the one occasion I was given a flight in a JP5, I remember the ejector seat briefing mentioned that the ground crew were trained not to grab anything if they slipped while taking out the last safety pins before flight. This was especially so if the seat was the 0/90 variety, I seem to remember.

Have there been any instances of ground crew accidentaly firing the ejector seat under these circumstances?

[engineer(retard)]

Pulse

Not exactly the same but a seat was fired at Boscombe in the hangar during maintenance.

regards

retard

[Stan Evil]

Here are brief details of 3 I remember:

1. RN Sea Harrier pilot steps out of jet following flying display having forgotton seat pin (?); puts foot on handle which comes out of housing and fires him and seat into the air. Unbraked landing fatal.

2. Tornado pilot takes avoiding action at low level without telling nav. Nav thinks they're going to die and command ejects pilot and himself.

3. Instructor in PC-9 at end of basic exercise half-rolls prior to pulling to lose height quickly. Student stapped in 'loose and comfy' moves in seat under negative g and grabs nearest handle for support - bang! Instructor loses about 8000 ft regaining control and flys home with big hole in front canopy. Student retrieved by helicopter.

[The Rocket]

Pulse
Not exactly the same but a seat was fired at Boscombe in the hangar during maintenance.


And there's a nice new patch of roof visible there IIRC, with a dayglo sticker detailing the event, placed there when the armourer involved left the unit.

[Dan Winterland]

Privately owned JP5 out of Norht Weald. Owner flying with brother, who isn't a pilot. Rolls upside down, unfortunately top latch is not engaed properly but owner doesn't know this as he hasn't been doing the seat checks prior to flight as the seats were made 'Safe' on transfer to the civil register. The seat moves enough to trip the drouge bolt gun which despite the seat being made 'safe', as it still has it's cartridge installed. Drouge bolt fires, punches hole in canopy, hapless brother now dragged though hole into the slipstream.

Luckily, the incompetant who made the seat safe also didn't de-activate the barostat, so the rest of the sequence works as advertised. Unfortunately though, the brother hadn't done his harness up correctly - no leg loops. So he slips through the harness until the QRB is jammed below his chin which is all that's stopping him fall out altogether. Before he is asphyxiated, he lands on a car in a supermarket car park which breaks his fall, but also his ankle.

Luckily, this was his only serious injury. A very lucky chap indeed.

[Onan the Clumsy]

Subsequent tests showed that there was no way that the fitter could get himself into the space available....but he did!
Off topic I know but true because I was there...

I was at the airport once and heard a T6 (Harvard) join the pattern. I watched it briefly, then returned to polishing the paint on a 172. Next I heard a sort of racing engine sound and an unmistakable thud. Well it might have been mistakable for exactly what it was, but it was unmistakably bad.

It turned out he was wearing a new parachute, tried to flare, couldn't do it properly as he was a big fat bas... erm, a cheerful rotund sort of fellow and had lost control. He'd gone careening over the grass and ended up inverted and I missed it :( I was like the little kid at the seaside in the harrier ditching film whose not looking out to sea until after the a/c has disappeared:{ )

Anyway, I legged it over there - fook I was knackered, I'm just glad German soldiers werent' chasing me. When I got there I saw the canopy was slightly crushed but the bloke was ok. Everything seemed under control until I noticed a big flame come out of the exhaust stack. "Oh look at that" I remarked "It's on fire"

I grabbed a cushion and held it over the opening, and glanced up to see the filler cap directly above my head :ugh: I made a quick calculation of exactly how long I was going to stay there and decided the cut of point would be just before the cap failed and I got doused in fuel.

Anyway, being informed that his aircraft was on fire sort of galvanized the pilot. He started to wriggle out of one of the side windows, ut his rig got caught up on something. I have to hand it to him, rather than start panicing. he went back in, took the shoulder straps off and then squeezed through the broken window. It was like watching a cartoon.

So yes it's quite amazing what shapes and sizes we can make our bodies.

[Krystal n chips]

And there's a nice new patch of roof visible there IIRC, with a dayglo sticker detailing the event, placed there when the armourer involved left the unit.


I seem to recall that the ASF Hangar at Bruggen in the F-4 days was modified in the same way---not sure if the seat went through the roof though--or just clattered it's way round the girders.

JimGriff
Thanks for the reply and account of the Hunter incident:ok:

[Navaleye]

I vaguely recall a story of a Bucc returning to the UK from Germany where one of the ground crew had managed to "win" a ride in the back seat. He wasn't told that the sortie would be on the deck in particularly choppy conditions. After an extended period of less than reassuring banter, the said erk decided to pull the handle and leave the aircraft.

Only heard that second hand a long time ago, but from a very reliable source and it stuck with me.

Any other good ejection stories out there?

Regards,

Navaleye

[rvusa]

[QUOTE=Stan Evil]Here are brief details of 3 I remember:
1. RN Sea Harrier pilot steps out of jet following flying display having forgotton seat pin (?); puts foot on handle which comes out of housing and fires him and seat into the air. Unbraked landing fatal.



I believe that, whilst this occured at Yeovilton, it was actually the RAF Harrier display pilot who had this fatal accident?

[Blodwyn Pig]

i seem to recall being told all sorts of horror stories during training , one of which was a groundcrew chappie getting his forearm heavily modified by a F.4 drogue gun bullet and chute. apparently he was leaning on the drogue gun when it fired, the bullet went through his wrist, up his forearm , exiting at the elbow, it then pulled the drogue chute with it. not sure if it was just a scare story, or if it actually happened.

not so much as an inadvertant ejection, but more of an unnecessary one. student pilot from the senior service managed to get his hawk to do a wheels up landing at Mona (reserve landing ground), aircraft gracefully scrapes to a halt just off the runway on the grass with very little damage, young student type sits there with the engine idling for just over 30 seconds, and decides the easiest way to get out was to eject!..seems that to just shut down and step out was a bit complicated!
he got very bad MDC spatter, and was out of circulation for 18months, but came back and finished his training.

[jimgriff]

Blodwyn..
The arm and drogue sewing class happened with a Canberra not an F4 and is a true story.

[Blodwyn Pig]

cheers, still sounds pretty gruesome!

[jimgriff]

http://www.ejectorseats.co.uk/frewin%201.jpg

The mil have been trying to stop it for years!!! (c) MOD Graphics. Reproduced with permission

[jimgriff]

http://www.ejectorseats.co.uk/frewin2.jpg

(c) MOD Graphics. Reproduced with permission.

[Safeware]

M609, re SK-60

He should count himself lucky that he got an ejection seat! They took them out when I went flying in one. :D

sw

[Samuel]

I witnessed an ejection seat accident on a 208 Sqn Venom at RAF Eastleigh, [that'll rattle the memory cells!], when an armourer accidently triggered the drogue gun, the bolt of which penetrated his arm taking the cords with it! He survived with his arm more or less intact, but with some nasty scars.

I also witnessed a double ejection from a 64 Sqn Javelin at Tengah in 1966, where the aircraft in question turned onto finals [just about the Officers Mess] and, apparently, the throttle locks engaged and the aircraft was coming down like a lift! There followed the usual canopy departure and a double bang as the crew departed. You don't actually believe what you're watching for a split-second or so!

Funnily enough, the aircraft was largely intact in the area it came down.

[Samuel]

I have a couple of post-ejection photos of one of Milt's RAAF F111s if anyone cares to host them!

This aircraft ingested a serious amount of water on take-off and ended up, sans capsule, off the end of the runway.

[ShyTorque]

"I believe that, whilst this occured at Yeovilton, it was actually the RAF Harrier display pilot who had this fatal accident?"

I concur, I think it was an RAF display pilot.

[FJJP]

Canberra seat went off in the hangar at Wyton some years ago. Fitter injured, I believe, but survived, although badly injured. I've got the DV panel from the canopy...

[MightyGem]

There's always the inadvertant partial ejection of the A6 Intruder BN here. (http://www.gallagher.com/ejection_seat/)

[Blacksheep]

A former electrical fitter colleague of mine was posted to the Red Sparrers in the Gnat days. They positioned to their display base with ground crew in the back seat. On this particular day, during start-up the intercomm was playing up, but they left Little Rizzy without getting it fixed. While executing a turn in the climb the aircraft began to vibrate violently and dropped a wing. My old mate in the back heard a buzz on the intercomm and without further ado yanked his handle, exiting the aeroplane. As soon as he left, the aircraft stopped vibrating and returned to normal flight. Matey alighted in a field about three seconds later, with his 'chute barely deployed and just missing a tree. He was quite naturally upset to see his former carriage flying away towards the airfield. Hitching a ride back with a farmer, he arrived at the squadron with parachute under his arm, to find his Gnat, sans canopy, parked outside the office. Although that particular aircraft had a reputation as a bit of a dog, and was later found to have a distorted wing, poor "Tez" has never lived it down and more than thirty years on, people (like me) still take the piss...

[chuks]

When I got to Lagos, Nigeria in 1981 there was an old Russian bomber left over from the Biafra war that was parked in the bush across from our ramp. I think it was a 'Badger' but I cannot remember now. It had twin under-wing engines.

There were a lot of crazy people just left to wander around Lagos airport, Murtala Muhammed, in those days. One guy was nicknamed 'Airport Commandant' and he liked to mess around with the old bomber. I think he slept down the back. He would get up in the cockpit and be heard to be hammering away at various artifacts there to be found, but no one ever bothered to disturb him. Who wants to argue with a madman?

So, of course, one day there was a big bang and the madman and the pilot's ejection seat both went arcing through the air. He broke his neck when he came down on the wing was what I was told.

Then it turned out that the aircraft had been left fully armed. Bombs in the bomb bay and plenty of rounds for the cannon, too! The military came and towed it away, leaving the rest of us thanking our lucky stars that the madman chose to hammer on stuff in the cockpit and not in the bomb bay.

[sled dog]

Samuel, i believe the incident you described with 64 Sqdn at Tengah ( double ejection ) was caused by the control locks being " on ", and the a/c had just taken off, not landing. A/c came down in the Jurong area , crew ok. ( I was there ):eek: .

[Samuel]

Standing right next to me as I write is a visitor from the UK and a former member of 64 Sqn who , as I did, witnessed the incident, and the aircraft was landing. It may well have just taken off, but it was definitely completing a normal landing phase when it all went wrong! It did end up in the Jurong area! It had done the downwind bit and turned onto finals. The guy standing next to me was an armourer, who shared in the two crates of beer [only two!]provided by the pilot and nav! My understanding was that it was throttle locks that engaged, not control locks, without which being disengaged aircraft would surely never have got off the ground?

The pilot, incidentally, had a previous ejection to his credit! I wasn't offered any beer!

[sled dog]

Dragmaster control locks ( ailerons / rudder ) were activated by a short lever on the throttle box, and may have been engaged by accident. Only 20% power available due to an interlock mechanism if " on ", so i agree, must have been " off " before t/o. Fading memory indicates that the pilot may have been Flt Lt Hart ?

[Rick Storm]

Think this might be one..................

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b9/dazdaz1/image009.jpg

[The Nr Fairy]

Nothing inadvertant about that ! "Crash and die, or eject and live . . . let me see . . ."