Pontiflex, you obviously never heard of the 20 West navex or similar:
My original post was the story going around 1 Gp. Here are some extracts from an earlier Pprune thread:
http://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-324763.html with the story from Marham 69 who was on the flight and Art Field who commented:
Marham 69:
My most energising 'brown adrenalin' experience of the Victor Cockpit view. Zooming along at FL390 M0.88, there was an explosion in the front cockpit (about 5 times as loud as 9mm practice on the pistol range) and the cockpit filled with dense smoke. Without any prior warning the canopy jettson lever had been activated. I swivelled around to front cockpit view expecting I know not what.
I should explain - this was on a 3 times round the UK 10hr training sortie for overseas deployment (fully re-tanked half way through). After about 5 hours Bill was a bit sore in the arse and swapped seats with the Nav Radar for a 10 min or so break. Dave M was doing his pilot thing.
Yup - you've guessed it. The Nav Radar (a very tall individual) was grappling around under the LHS seat to lower same. He pulled the wrong lever.
The Canopy DID NOT jettison. And at that height and speed I thank the Good Lord. To this day I am uncertain as to why - the reason I was given was cabin pressure <> outside air pressure. That seemed a bit odd to me ie the Captain would have to depressureise prior to ejection?
Art Field
28th Jul 2009, 19:53
Marham 69. As far as I can remember (We are going back a bit now) the canopy did not go because the cabin had not depressurized when the jettison handle was pulled. The depressurizing was initiated by the Abandon Aircraft switch on the Captains left window panel which would, when the cabin differential became zero, allow the canopy to be lifted off by the aerodynamic effect over it.
beefix
29th Jul 2009, 20:22
Art Field
Just about right, The canopy was held in place by a series of latches and was sealed by an inflatable rubber seal. You may remember the seal's gas bottle attached to the canopy. It was located just above the ejector seat and was inflated to 1800 psi. The integrity of the latches was checked by ensuring that the canopy rigging tool, located in the cabin near the left hand pilots consul, would pass through the the three rigging holes on the forward edge of the canopy, just on the pilots eye line. I was on 543 Sqn when the Marham canopy release incident happened, it certainly caused some consternation amongst the aircrew. IIRC we had to apply some extra markings to the canopy release handle. Having worked on both the Victor and Vulcan (44R Sqn Crew Chief) the cabin of the Victor was like sitting in a green house compared with the Vulcans " Black Hole of Calcutta"
However the following post by
VictorPilot accords with my memory:
Now to the Victor 1 accidental firing of the canopy jettison system. It has been well described earlier, but my recollection was slightly fuller. The First Pilots ejection seat had a handle on the right hand side of the seat to raise and lower it. On the cockpit structure to the left of the seat was a "Grip" handle which had to be pulled upwards to fire the canopy jettison cartridge. The navigator, who was not strapped into the seat, wanted to raise the ejection seat and asked what to do. He was told to pull the lever up - he had his hand on the canopy jettison, and pulled it up and the cartridge fired as advertised. Fortunately for the crew, it emerged that there was not sufficient power or leverage from the piston to drive the locks open. When the latches were holding the canopy closed with cabin pressure exerting a load of several tonnes against them, there was too much friction to allow the latches to unlock.