Ejection seats
 

Not sure this is the correct forum. But how old was the oldest person ever to eject? Roughly what injuries did they sustain?

Well, I'm certainly not but I can assure you it was a very smooth ride.

dook How long did you have between realising that something was wrong and deciding that it was time to go?

Very little time - the time it took to zoom climb from 250 feet agl to about 2500 feet.

The most common ejection injury is a compression fracture of vertebrae but with rocket assisted seats these are rare. More likely injuries occur when meeting terra firma again. Obviously, high speed ejections are another matter. In my case, with a rocket seat, I did have a compression fracture but I was in my mid 40s at the time and I broke an ankle on landing. No after effects to date. As to thinking time, it rather depends on whether it is premeditated or not. Again in my case I was back on terra firma 49secs after starting my take off roll and am very glad that I did not have (or need!) time to think about it.

That indicates, dook, that something went wrong very quickly after rotation and you had to get to 2,500 before pulling the blind? May one ask what machine you were compelled to leave?

It wasn't after rotation - it was over half an hour into the trip and at 450 knots. The zoom was to get away from the ground and kill speed. Both engines had failed.

There was no blind to pull - it was Mk9 seat and there was only a lower handle.

My one and only ride on a live seat was in a Marshall's Vampire at Shawbury in 1969. I still vividly remember being warned, as part of the seat checkout in the Safety Equipment Bay, that because it was powered by explosives and not rockets (a Mk. 3?), I would probably damage my spine if I had to eject!

I've only ever flown one aircraft with an ejector seat; the JP. Never had to use it, thank goodness. I was told however, that back injuries were less common in the RN. Because of the catapult launch and cable recovery, the pilots were strapped in much tighter that the general RAF pilot would be. One from my South Cerney course was demonstrating the rig, which was, I believe, a one-third charge. There was a mis-fire, and he loosened his straps while they sorted it out. Sadly for him, the seat fired, and he damaged his back such that he couldn't proceed to pilot training.

Yes, the seat in the T11 was cartridge powered - from long before the days of rocket seats. I trained on the T11; the seat was MB, Mk3 according to their website. It was not as capable as some other Mk 3 seats, having a 60ft/sec gun which meant you needed 200 ft agl and 120 kt IAS in level flight. Other Mk3 seats (e.g. Hunter) were fitted with an 80ft/sec gun, which gave 90 kt ground level capability. We were told that the Vampire structure was not strong enough for the more powerful gun.

The 80ft/sec gun regularly produced minor spinal injuries, but I suspect the 60ft/sec version was a little kinder.

I have several friends who have used the 80 ft/sec seat and none of them suffered any injuries.

The most important aspect was posture upon ejection.

Having seen Dook's post 11 above I realise that my post 5 was somewhat misleading in that it may have implied that ejection injuries are common. They are not and I too know of many colleagues and friends who have had injury free ejections. What I should have said is that if an injury is sustained during a pre-meditated and other than high speed ejection it is more likely to be a compression fracture. Dook is absolutely right - posture is the key. However, age is also a factor. As the vertebrae discs lose their flexibilty, their ability to absorb a rapid acceleration reduces.
We members of the Martin-Baker club are eternally grateful for their life-saving seats. My apologies for my potentially misleading post. It would be interesting to know though who the oldest successful ejectee was and how he fared (I am assuming that the oldest will be a male).

According to the ballistics boffins at Boscombe, my parachute opened at 190ft agl and the seat was never travelling upwards with respect to the ground after ejection.

The aeroplane was travelling backwards with hardly any forward speed when it impacted and I landed about fifty yards from the fireball.

I remember landing like a sack of potatoes and never even had time to release the PSP.

Was that because when you ejected the aircraft was descending rapidly or steeply banked, or both?

Descending rapidly with no engines.

Another having descended rapidly with no engines 41secs after t/o. Ejected at 230' 150kts in shallow descent. Like dook no time for descent VA's before being dumped back on land.https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....166cee38e3.jpg

My recollections on the Vampire T11 are mainly on how uncomfortable the seating was. It was not unlike sitting on a rock!

My longest trip was just over five hours in company with Martin Baker's finest and it was painless.

Not sure what period this covered, or his age, but he must be a possible candidate.

'kin 'ell that was a close call :D

Certainly was and what's more two of us escaped. We reckoned we punched about a second apart and landed just under 100 yards from each other.

What seat was it? if you don't mind..

Martin Baker Mk9 - see post #7.

When we arrived at Oakington we had our thighs measured. A couple were too lanky to fit in a Vampire with bang seats so they were sent off to the Meteor Flight.

Problem solved: Climb over the side.

Ouch........:O

'twas the same at Coltishall when a new WRAF officer arrived in the mess. :E

The initial thinking behind the rocket seat was primarily to keep the seat going on up post the gun firing, clearance of the tail assembly being one consideration.
The alternative solution with the early F. 104 was not found to be such a good idea!

Not really.

An analysis by Martin Baker showed that most ejections were low and slow and in many cases descending.

This was the main design reason behind the advent of rocket-assisted escape systems.

I was very cautious in my wording dook .
The first production rocket seat was in the F102 in the 50's and if you look at the height of the fin you can see what the main consideration was in that case.
The" low and slow" requirement was a later driver , albeit an extremely relevant one as addressed by M.B My comment of "primarily to keep the seat going on up post the gun firing" was meant to embrace that, on the way to "Zero Zero" and the later ACES and Russian seats, as later publicly demonstrated by Anatoly Kvochur out of the MiG 29 at Paris in 1989..
Like many others I initially thought that the rocket was primarily to help spread the "g" load during ejection. A fallacy that I was quickly disabused of during study detachments to the R.A.F.Institute of Aviation Medicine in the late 60's and early 70's.

I understand this was because there was a tendency for your legs to be removed above the knee by the edge of the cockpit windscreen if your thighs were too long.

When the fly-by-wire Hunter lost its engine just after liftoff at Farnborough, both pilots ejected and landed in the burning fuel on the runway where the aircraft had impacted, the remains of the aircraft then sliding into the arrestor barrier.
I didn't (quite) witness the occurence so I can't judge what height they ejected; I watched it taxy out and enter the runway from my car in the tower car park (it had been parked on the pan next to the tower) then I drove off, not knowing what was about to happen less than a minute later.

While I was at Coningsby, 1956-7, a tall 57 Sqdn pilot was strapped in a seat of a Canberra B2, while the seat was winched out of the a/c.

When it reached the point where his knees would have been chopped off, the seat was lowered, he was unstrapped and he climbed out.

He was taken off Canberra's. Dunno what happened to him.

On 92 when we changed from the Hunter to the Lightning some of the taller pilots were measured and at least one of our pilots discovered he was the wrong dimensions to escape unscathed should he need to eject from the Lightning. His complaint was that his legs were 'too long for the cockpit of the biggest fighter the RAF ever had '.

Yes, but the cockpit was tiny. I am 5ft 11ins but one of my Lightning colleagues was a 6ft 3ins South African and he fitted OK.

Sitting thigh length was the criterion and we're all different.

dook,

I'm also 5' 11" and sitting thigh length is within spec, but when I sat in an F6, I couldn't see how I could eject with my knees intact. Were the seat rails inclined?

I was also impressed by how high up I was!

Lack of Cushioning
 

I likened it to sitting on a new wooden church pew (MB 5 in an OV-1D Mohawk). The lack of cushioning was a feature in the event of an ejection. If there was any, the seat would accelerate upward when fired whereas your butt would still be stationary due to inertia. The result increased the shock loading on your spine. It was bad enough without the cushion. The seat qualification (pull the blind, go up the track) was with a reduced charge and my back still hurt for a few days.

The training setup that is sometimes seen in documentaries of a captive seat and compressed air pistonl lift of the seat - how realistic is that? Is simply about pulling the blind/handle or does it give more sense of how it will be? Looking back - was it helpful in preparing you?