Buccaneer at Paris Air Show
Formertonkaplum,
I cannot now remember what Mk of seat it was in the RAF's Buccaneer, but I was the (very) junior engineering member of the BoI which investigated the loss of 12 Sqn Buccaneer XN 978 at the run-in to the Paris Air Show in Jun 1971, and during his very low level ejection the pilot was lucky enough to survive the circumstances you postulate ie the static rod to the drogue gun had become disconnected and the drogue had not fired - everything else worked, and he went into the fireball with a partially deploying main chute and the seat still attached, via the unfired drogue gun, to the top of the canopy. The fireball kicked him back into the air and gave him the main chute (albeit with the chute and his flying clothing somewhat singed if I recall correctly) and he was then injured in the ribs as the seat came back across the canopy and hit him just before he landed on the edge of the fireball. His navigator ejected at low level successfully and normally. As you might imagine there was a great deal of interest from MB and the Command ejection seat specialists (I was an electrical specialist so not too much help) but if I remember correctly this was then the only seat installation where the pin attaching the drogue gun static line was mounted fore and aft rather than transversely, and I believe the installation was then modified. There were other seat issues as well eg it had been signed as being installed to the incorrect SP (the right one was, if I remember correctly still in course of issue) but these were not seen as directly relevavant to the instalation problem.
Somewhat ironically the same pilot had had his navigator eject on the runway at Karup some 3 weeks earlier, and he told the Paris BoI that when he went back after that incident to check the aircraft for safety he found this pin missing on his (unused) seat. At the time he had thought this was a special RDAF safety precaution (although it actually left the installation in a more dangerous condition) but it did bear out the fact that we were happy that he had indeed checked the pin was there on XN 978 before flight.
Whether any of this has any relevance to the main purpose of this thread, other than to confirm there have been incidents and accidents where the drogue gun has not worked "as advertised" I would not know - others with more knowledge may care to comment.
To complete this story though the second luckiest man on the planet was the gendarme who helped carry the pilot's seat into the guarded crash site through thick scrub and tree branches (they crashed in woodland near Compiegne) with the static rod dangling down and a live drogue gun pointing at his stomach. The drogue gun was still live when we got there the next day.
The rumours that although neither the pilot nor the navigator had planned on landing in France they returned witha bottle and 200 on the casevac Hercules later on the afternoon of the crash were to the best of my knowledge true - aircrew are obviously very good at making the best of the bad job!
Finally we had to do the BoI twice as the AOC did not like some thinly veiled critiscim in the BoI's findings of the pressure he had applied to the crew to do better - apparently the day before the Victor had appeaerd at the Show with the Lightning plugged in and the Buccaneer "chasing" the hose, and the pilot had commented to the BoI about this pressure. We had new aircrew on the second BoI, and I got a second visit to Paris! It does show though that comments on other threads concerning the need for an independence of the military investigation system from the chain of command are not without foundation - at least at that time anyway!