The Ten one used the forward pax door, it's a long time ago, says on VC10. Net
The left front entrance door was converted to enable crew members to exit the aircraft by parachute in case of emergency. Because of this the right front service door would from now on be the main entrance door. The escape chute was extensively tested, but later on in the service life of the tankers a decision was made to block off the system as there was no need for it.
But we were told they hit the wing, so anyone's guess as to the truth.
The Tanker Conversions
Though the prototype escape chute on the very first one dropped out underneath and that said
Testing and early days to Escape from a VC10
The first three aircraft had escape hatches for the flight test crew and one of my jobs was to help the photographer with his high speed cine-film photographs of simulated escapes from a model in the 13' x 9' tunnel. I pulled the string which released a model man who was then photographed, something that we did for various speeds and attitudes. All was well except for one particular combination and one hatch (the one forward on the side), when the man flew into the engine. We did that test again and he hit the tailplane. At the third attempt he just caught the wing downwash and went safely below the engines.
Some time later I asked the photographer what the flight test crew said when they saw the film. He told me that he had cut that bit out and only showed the safe exit as he didn't want to worry them! I never did find out whether he was pulling my leg or whether he really did edit the film."
Well, things could have been worse! On the subject of escape hatches I couldn't resist adding the following lines from Brian Trubshaw's 1998 autobiography 'Test Pilot'. In these lines Brian Trubshaw recalls one of the stall tests that he carried out with the prototype G-ARTA when things didn't go as planned. There is also some information about this flight on the Incidents and Accidents page, including some comments from an ex-Vickers ground crew member.
"The last day of 1963 nearly brought the stalling programme to an abrupt end. I was just recovering from a clean stall when at about 250 Kts all hell broke loose as G-ARTA started shaking violently. There was a shout from the Senior Observer, Chris Mullen, who was looking at the tail through his periscope, 'Right inner elevator'. I was quite certain that G-ARTA was going to come apart and it nearly did, so I fired the escape hatch door and ordered the crew to bale out. The flight engineer, Roy Mole, could not get out of his seat and the same applied to the co-pilot Captain Peter Cane of BOAC, while the crew in the back could not hear me above the general racket. I managed to reduce speed to about 160 Kts which put me very close to a pre-stall buffet, whereupon the violent vibrations and oscillations calmed down to a smaller amount. The escape hatch chute which went through the front forward hold had collapsed and gone out when the door was jettisoned, so it was as well nobody tried to use it and only a jangled bunch of metal remained. I made a very gentle return towards Wisley under Mayday conditions and soon realized that I had lost half the aircraft services. However, the split system principle worked very well but I had to free-fall the right landing gear. After flight inspection revealed that the two right-hand engines had rotated 2 inch and in doing so pulled off hydraulic pipes and air-conditioning pipes. The right inner elevator had broken its attachment bracket which had set up flutter of that surface. Two fin attachment bolts were severed. In fact poor G-ARTA with whom I had developed a great bond of affection was in a sorry state. I think that we had done about 2,300 stalls together."
The type of escape hatch discussed above was fitted to both the VC10 and also to the BAC 1-11 (and perhaps other types of aircraft but I'm not sure about that). They consisted of a metal tunnel (the escape chute) that slid down through the forward freight hold to extend down below the aircraft through the freight hold door aperture after the door was removed using explosive bolts. Whether this would have provided a safe exit for the flight crew is a debatable issue, especially when the stories above are taken into account. The BAC 1-11 prototype G-ASHG was lost in October 1963 - just months before the incident with G-ARTA - when it got itself into a stable stalled condition and the flight crew did not have enough elevator authority left to regain control. The escape system was fired but the aircraft hit the ground shortly after the freight hold door was explosively removed. The flight test crew of seven did not survive the accident.
