1995 ejection from U2R at RAF Fairford
Sorry about the weird formatting but the text is copied off the RAF Fairford website.....
The text high-lighted in bold gives some idea of the seats as fitted in 1995 which had then supposedly a "zero-zero" capability..... a ROD of 27 fpm is over 1,600 fpm. The crude rule of thumb, is that to survive one needs height equal to 10% assuming wings level even with a 0-0 seat.......
MB
In early 1995 when RAF Alconbury in East Anglia, UK closed the 9th Reconnaissance Wing moved their forward operating location known as Operating Location-United Kingdom (OL-UK) to RAF Fairford. The unit’s three U-2R aircraft and several hundred ground crew took up residence at the Gloucestershire base at a time when there was international political interest in the former-Yugoslavia.
Once settled into their new Cotswold home the unit began flying operational missions on an almost daily basis. In fact even today the U-2 is the only aircraft in of the United States Air Force that flies operational missions everyday of the year somewhere in the world, and has done for the last five decades. On the 29th August 1995 disaster was to strike. Captain David Hawkens was to take himself and the U-2 68-10338 on what was described as a “higher-headquarters tasked reconnaissance sortie” where “Mooch 31” his mission call sign was scheduled to “conduct operations at high altitude along a classified routing” before returning to RAF Fairford eight to ten hours later.
When Hawkens took off at 7:27am the left pogo, a detachable wheel used to stabilise the aircraft’s wings during ground operations, failed to fall from the aircraft as expected when the aircraft left the runway. With the pogo still attached Hawkens halted the mission and leveled off at 500 feet before beginning a visual approach to Fairford’s runway 27.
The agreed U-2 procedure for a “hung pogo” was to rock the aircraft’s wings and yaw from side to side while over a safe area in the hope the pogo would fall off. In the case of RAF Fairford the procedure specifically mentioned avoiding over flying the village of Kempsford and using the area to the south of the main runway to shake off the pogos while maintaining a minimum height of 500 feet. When Hawkens reached the airfield his Commander on the ground told him to “try rocking the wings a little bit and kick the rudders”. The pilot started shaking and rocking the aircraft but at the same time he was losing vital speed and altitude.
Just after Hawkens had passed the runway’s midpoint the aircraft entered a stall during which the left wing dropped and hit the runway breaking off the wingtip. The aircraft veered left towards the grassed infields and a few seconds later the aircraft struck a power sub-station on the ground and crashed through the base’s perimeter fence. It was when the aircraft hit the concrete taxiway during the bounce that Hawkens ejected.
The U-2’s ejection system is classed as “zero-zero” meaning its considered safe for ejection at zero altitude and zero airspeed however for this to be true the aircraft must also have no bank angle or sink rate. At the time of ejection Hawkens was sinking at a rate of 27 feet per second and the aircraft was banking 20 degrees to the left. The seat’s drogue chute deployed but the main chute didn’t have time to open causing the pilot to land on his side 150 feet east of the wreckage and still pointing in the direction of ejection.
Following the ejection the aircraft came to a halt in a farmer’s field just outside the base perimeter where the nose broke off and the engine, wings and cockpit section caught fire. Five crash rescue vehicles and the Fire Chief arrived on scene and began tackling the fire while the rescue truck which had arrived with fire fighters was out searching the crash site for the pilot. The Air Force ambulance along with the U-2 unit’s Physiological Support Division (PSD) truck which had tools on board to help remove the pilot’s pressure suit helmet also arrived ready to help once Hawkens had been found.
At the time it wasn’t know that he’d ejected from the aircraft but once Hawkens had been found and his injuries inspected it was decided to evacuate him straight away to the base’s trauma centre before he could be airlifted to the Princess Margaret Hospital in Swindon by a local police helicopter. Despite obviously severe injuries the medics continued to try and stabilise his condition however Captain Hawkens’s autopsy later described the force at which he hit the ground as being his cause of
death. His official time of death was recorded as 9:55am, 29th August 1995.
Captain David “Hawk” Hawkens came from a military family in McLean, Fairfax County, North Virginia and was just 35 when he died. He’d been flying the U-2 for just over a year and had flown nine operational missions from RAF Fairford.