Although the descent angle wasn't nearly as vertical as it seemed to people, based on some of the comments, in this post I'd like to address that the timing of the ejection sequence.
The time from ejection to impact, was fairly short ... but was still between 3.7 and 4.3 seconds between canopy starting to depart and the ejectees disappearing behind the tree line.
I ran the most common original video through the Vegas video editor to zoom and add timestamps.
(The Shannon Forest video from twitter, where at the end the camera pans down, man says "It just crashed", boy says "Oh my god.")
One can't tell when handles were first pulled, so one has to go with the first visible signs of ejection, the canopy starting to depart the aircraft.
That's my zero point. Then:
- First ejection noticed (smoke first seen) 0.67 seconds
- Second ejection noticed (smoke first seen) 1.03 seconds (which is 0.37 sec later)
- First object disappearing behind tree line 3.70 seconds (2.66 sec after their ejection first seen)
(This is the SECOND, lower ejection, with no visible chute at long distance in the video)
- Second object disappearing behind the tree line 4.30 seconds (3.63 sec after their ejection first seen)
(Actually, not the person but the starting-to-inflate canopy behind that FIRST ejectee, which disappears behind the treeline just as it goes out of frame on the video too. Presumably the survivor.)
Of course the visible tree line isn't quite at ground level but close enough for this analysis.
So the first ejectee had the benefit of a bit over a third of a second earlier ejection, thus a bit of extra altitude, plus the aircraft pitched down fairly rapidly between the two ejections. That gave the first ejectee basically one extra second air time, which helped at least give them a partially inflated canopy.
The Tutor doesn't have command ejection?? (pilot pulls, both seats are fired in some predetermined sequence) I guess not but I don't think anyone with experience has clarified that issue.
Assuming not, being the second to pull the handle after the aircraft commander, just about a third of a second later, is actually pretty good performance, but the conditions were unfortunately too marginal for it to work out here.