Ejection seats, some salutary anecdotes

[david parry]

For those of us long enough in the tooth to remember the Ejection Seat Bus run from Seafield Park (Lee on Solent) and visited ALL air stations.
During it's visit All wafu's had to attend the ejection seat lecture (this happened many times during my career). Now the bus contained an ejection seat (unarmed) and also a few other bits of memorabilia, including a drogue attached to a length of nylon cord. The cord was stained with blood. It seems that an armourer while removing the seat neglected to disconnect the static line attached to the drogue, hence seat lifted, drogue fired large lump of metal entered armourers head through eye and exited through skull. The armourer lived to tell the tale. he was medically discharged and moved to Portsmouth. Some years later he was to appear in court on some pornography charge, his defence was that his judgement had been impaired by his injury.