Originally Posted by jimgriff
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.