Bail out procedure for Spitfire Mark IX
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Strangely no procedure in Pilots Notes under 'Emergencies':-
AP 1565I Pilot's Notes for Spitfire IX,XI & XVI
You can only download in pdf if you are registered, but the document can be read throughout online.
AP 1565I Pilot's Notes for Spitfire IX,XI & XVI
You can only download in pdf if you are registered, but the document can be read throughout online.
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JeanB (et al),
I've had a look at "Title: Re: Spitfire Bail Out Procedure". All good stuff ! To the best of my recollection, I don't think the Pilot's Notes in 1942 said anything about a "Bale out" Procedure at all, and our Instructors at my OTU at the time taught us nothing. Everybody knew that the idea was to get out as fast as you can and anyway you can.
Each case is different, the only thing I would advise against is holding the ripcord handle before you are clear of the plane. You'd need two hands for yourself, and the danger is that a premature opening could result in a half-opened canopy becoming entangled with the aircraft structure.
Never had to "bale" out myself, so really don't know !
Cheers, Danny42C.
I've had a look at "Title: Re: Spitfire Bail Out Procedure". All good stuff ! To the best of my recollection, I don't think the Pilot's Notes in 1942 said anything about a "Bale out" Procedure at all, and our Instructors at my OTU at the time taught us nothing. Everybody knew that the idea was to get out as fast as you can and anyway you can.
Each case is different, the only thing I would advise against is holding the ripcord handle before you are clear of the plane. You'd need two hands for yourself, and the danger is that a premature opening could result in a half-opened canopy becoming entangled with the aircraft structure.
Never had to "bale" out myself, so really don't know !
Cheers, Danny42C.
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This is copied from post # 1288 in the "Gaining an RAF Brevet etc . . . " and are the recollections of my father, who flew Spitfires in 1941-42
A long entry, but I did not want to lose the continuity of the action. Apologies if it seems a bit family and boring. JF
72 Sqn – March 1942 – Engagement, Bale-out and move to Biggin Hill
Anyway, as you know by now, I’d been seeing quite a lot of Mum during the time I was at 111 and now 72 and I had a few days leave at the beginning of March and we thought it would be rather nice if we were to become engaged. Now in those days it was the usual thing for the prospective son-in-law to see the father-in-law and ask for the hand of his daughter. Well we’d been down to Monkhams that night (The Monkhams Inn was a pub about half a mile from 76 Kings Avenue, near Roding Valley Station, and a favourite of Ferdie and Else, who continued to frequent it right up till the ‘60s), and we came back and Mum knew I was going to speak to Ferdie about this and she and Else (mother in law of RJHR) went into the kitchen and I said to Ferdie,
“Can I have a word with you?”
“Yes, alright.”
So we went into the lounge and with some trepidation I said that Con and I would like to become engaged if it’s alright with you. Well he seemed fairly pleased with the idea but said he’d rather we waited to get married for a year or so. We didn’t mind, having surmounted the first hurdle. Now at that time I had about £10 in the bank and a tax rebate, so having collected the tax rebate, Mum and I went up to the City and bought the engagement ring which I placed on your mothers’ hand on the 10th March in the Queens’ Brasserie. But Mum took it off again, because Ferdie rather wanted us to become engaged on his birthday, which, if I remember rightly, was the 11th March.
I went back to the squadron highly delighted and full of myself and the lads were quite pleased, because they’d heard nothing but my talking about Mum day in and day out, which may surprise you, young John.
The weather was picking up, we did quite a few sweeps of which I was on eight in March We went to various places, Boulougne, Calais, Dunkirk, Abbeville and a place called Massingguard, which I’ve never yet managed to find on any map. All I remember is that it was quite a long way into France, but we met very little opposition, I didn’t get a squirt at a Hun anyway. We met them, but they wouldn’t play and we got to ignore the flak unless it came very close; there was no great panic about it, particularly over Abbeville. If you went one side of the river, I can never remember which, you got flak all round you, but if you went the other side of the river you got very little flak at all, which was quite good.
On the 14th March we were due to escort six Bostons to Le Harve which we didn’t mind a bit, inasmuch as the Bostons were quite fast and they didn’t hang about once they’d bombed the target which gave us a little more scope to have a crack at anything that came up. Well on this particular occasion we had to hang around in the Ops Room after being briefed and whilst there was nothing doing the Intelligence Officer, a Sqn Ldr Derfour decided that we could have a little chat from a Sqn Ldr who’d baled out a few days before and finished up in the Channel. As I said before, very few of us had ever baled out and any information was good for us. Well, I sat next to Brain Kingcome while the talk was going on, and the chap was explaining how he’d pulled up into a slow roll, hung on his back, undone his straps and dropped out. Brian turned to me and said,
“I don’t believe that method, Robbie, it’s a lot easier to shove the stick forward and get hurled out.”
Well I didn’t think any more about it and we picked up these Bostons, went across to Le Harve and there was a fair amount of flak and I’m not sure if I got hit, to be honest. Anyway, coming back, about halfway across the Channel, glycol started pouring out like mad and the engine was making funny noises. My Number 2 called up and said that I was on fire and bale out. Well on the 14th March it was very, very cold, very bleak, there were enormous waves which had great white tops on them and I didn’t fancy finishing up in the drink at all. We passed a couple of coasters, quite near our coast and my Number 2 was calling,
“Get out, get out”
And I still didn’t fancy it inasmuch as if I’d finished in the sea, with the height of the waves, the coasters probably wouldn’t have seen me anyway and I’d have frozen stiff or drowned or both, so I said,
“No, I’ll put the aircraft down on the beach”.
Well, having got so far near Brighton I thought, ‘Oh well, the beach is probably mined, so I’ll put it down in a field’. Well it was still chuntering along, but by this time a fair bit of smoke had come out and the smoke was coming up through the cockpit and I thought I’d better get out and for some reason I had an idea that if baled out you were given leave. So before I undid my straps and decided to get out I called up my Number 2 and said,
“Is it right you get a weeks leave if you bale out?”
Well his reply was short and to the point.
“Don’t whatsit whatsit” as he was yelling at me to get out.
So having got rid of the hood, or slid it back, I undid all the straps and trimmed the aircraft fully forward, and I thought, well I’ll take my hands off the stick and give a mighty push and I should be hurled out. Well having trimmed it fully forward, the minute I let go of the stick, the nose dropped and the next thing I knew I was floating about in the air. Now I looked up and I couldn’t see any parachute and I thought I must be upside down, so I looked between my legs and there was still no parachute. I looked round and found I hadn’t pulled the ripcord, which I did a bit smartly and, a second or so later, there was a satisfying thump and the parachute opened. I must say it’s a very soothing experience, to float about 1500’ up, it’s so quiet it’s amazing. The only thing was that the aircraft was still on fire and flying round and round on its own and I had visions of it colliding with me, but it didn’t.
Sitting in my parachute harness, surveying the landscape, I found there were fields all around except for one large copse and that seemed to be the place where I was headed. Now I know that if you pull on one side of the rigging the parachute will go one way and if pull on the other side it will go in the opposite direction, but there’s no method by which you can keep the parachute up there any longer than the force of gravity will allow. As I didn’t want to land any faster than I would normally do, I just let the parachute take me and I was dragged backwards through quite a few trees and eventually came to quite a pleasant halt, stuck in the top of the tree. So I undid my harness and climbed down and made my way to the edge of the copse, through a hedge and lo and behold, in the road, just the other side of the hedge was one old dear, who looked at me as I came through the hedge, and said,
“Would you like a cup of tea?”
I said ‘No thank you very much’, crawled out, and waved to my number 2 to show that I was alright and he disappeared back to Gravesend.
Now just after that a lady doctor arrived in her car and picked me up and took me to the nearest military base, which happened to be a Canadian dental centre. Now these characters had seen me fly over, emitting vast amounts of smoke and seen the other Spitfire and naturally assumed that the Spitfire had shot down a Jerry and I was the Jerry. So the CO, a colonel, had armed everybody with rifles and revolvers and anything else he could lay his hands on and they were all set to come out and pick me up and I think they were quite disappointed when I arrived.
Anyway, they were quite nice to me and I was bit scruffy, but they took me into the Officers’ Mess and forced a large whisky on me, and as you know I can’t stand whisky, but I managed to get it down. The only snag was, I’d left my pipe at Gravesend on the window ledge of the dining room, I remember it well. So they gave me a cigar and I smoked that, had a very nice meal, then the CO gave me his car and driver and I was taken to Shoreham.
There was a small hospital at Shoreham where I spent the night and had a check-up and the following morning I was taken to Shoreham aerodrome where the lads were going to fly me back to Gravesend in a Lysander. Well I must admit I wasn’t too popular with the lads at Shoreham. They had an air-sea rescue base there with a Walrus and they’d watched me coming across the Channel with smoke and everything else billowing out and they were looking forward to doing a bit of air-sea rescue and getting another notch on their gun-barrel or whatever they do and they were most upset when I chugged across Shoreham, still emitting smoke and baled out farther on! Anyway, they put me in this Lysander and took me back to Gravesend and to sit in the back of a Lysander when it lands is quite an experience. To begin with, when it slows down, enormous sort of shutters shoot out of the wing with a helluva clatter and it drops almost vertically, but they got me there quite safely.
Now, having landed I felt quite the little hero and I was walking up to the dispersal and spoke to Brian, Brian Kingcome, who congratulated me on getting out and getting home alright and I felt quite chuffed until he said,
“There is one point, Robbie, you don’t have to tell all the bloody German Air Force, you’re going to bale out!”
I felt quite a little hero for a time, especially when I had to explain exactly what it was like getting out and what I did and how, but my number 2 still insisted I would have been better off jumping into the Channel, with which I did not agree.
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A long entry, but I did not want to lose the continuity of the action. Apologies if it seems a bit family and boring. JF
72 Sqn – March 1942 – Engagement, Bale-out and move to Biggin Hill
Anyway, as you know by now, I’d been seeing quite a lot of Mum during the time I was at 111 and now 72 and I had a few days leave at the beginning of March and we thought it would be rather nice if we were to become engaged. Now in those days it was the usual thing for the prospective son-in-law to see the father-in-law and ask for the hand of his daughter. Well we’d been down to Monkhams that night (The Monkhams Inn was a pub about half a mile from 76 Kings Avenue, near Roding Valley Station, and a favourite of Ferdie and Else, who continued to frequent it right up till the ‘60s), and we came back and Mum knew I was going to speak to Ferdie about this and she and Else (mother in law of RJHR) went into the kitchen and I said to Ferdie,
“Can I have a word with you?”
“Yes, alright.”
So we went into the lounge and with some trepidation I said that Con and I would like to become engaged if it’s alright with you. Well he seemed fairly pleased with the idea but said he’d rather we waited to get married for a year or so. We didn’t mind, having surmounted the first hurdle. Now at that time I had about £10 in the bank and a tax rebate, so having collected the tax rebate, Mum and I went up to the City and bought the engagement ring which I placed on your mothers’ hand on the 10th March in the Queens’ Brasserie. But Mum took it off again, because Ferdie rather wanted us to become engaged on his birthday, which, if I remember rightly, was the 11th March.
I went back to the squadron highly delighted and full of myself and the lads were quite pleased, because they’d heard nothing but my talking about Mum day in and day out, which may surprise you, young John.
The weather was picking up, we did quite a few sweeps of which I was on eight in March We went to various places, Boulougne, Calais, Dunkirk, Abbeville and a place called Massingguard, which I’ve never yet managed to find on any map. All I remember is that it was quite a long way into France, but we met very little opposition, I didn’t get a squirt at a Hun anyway. We met them, but they wouldn’t play and we got to ignore the flak unless it came very close; there was no great panic about it, particularly over Abbeville. If you went one side of the river, I can never remember which, you got flak all round you, but if you went the other side of the river you got very little flak at all, which was quite good.
On the 14th March we were due to escort six Bostons to Le Harve which we didn’t mind a bit, inasmuch as the Bostons were quite fast and they didn’t hang about once they’d bombed the target which gave us a little more scope to have a crack at anything that came up. Well on this particular occasion we had to hang around in the Ops Room after being briefed and whilst there was nothing doing the Intelligence Officer, a Sqn Ldr Derfour decided that we could have a little chat from a Sqn Ldr who’d baled out a few days before and finished up in the Channel. As I said before, very few of us had ever baled out and any information was good for us. Well, I sat next to Brain Kingcome while the talk was going on, and the chap was explaining how he’d pulled up into a slow roll, hung on his back, undone his straps and dropped out. Brian turned to me and said,
“I don’t believe that method, Robbie, it’s a lot easier to shove the stick forward and get hurled out.”
Well I didn’t think any more about it and we picked up these Bostons, went across to Le Harve and there was a fair amount of flak and I’m not sure if I got hit, to be honest. Anyway, coming back, about halfway across the Channel, glycol started pouring out like mad and the engine was making funny noises. My Number 2 called up and said that I was on fire and bale out. Well on the 14th March it was very, very cold, very bleak, there were enormous waves which had great white tops on them and I didn’t fancy finishing up in the drink at all. We passed a couple of coasters, quite near our coast and my Number 2 was calling,
“Get out, get out”
And I still didn’t fancy it inasmuch as if I’d finished in the sea, with the height of the waves, the coasters probably wouldn’t have seen me anyway and I’d have frozen stiff or drowned or both, so I said,
“No, I’ll put the aircraft down on the beach”.
Well, having got so far near Brighton I thought, ‘Oh well, the beach is probably mined, so I’ll put it down in a field’. Well it was still chuntering along, but by this time a fair bit of smoke had come out and the smoke was coming up through the cockpit and I thought I’d better get out and for some reason I had an idea that if baled out you were given leave. So before I undid my straps and decided to get out I called up my Number 2 and said,
“Is it right you get a weeks leave if you bale out?”
Well his reply was short and to the point.
“Don’t whatsit whatsit” as he was yelling at me to get out.
So having got rid of the hood, or slid it back, I undid all the straps and trimmed the aircraft fully forward, and I thought, well I’ll take my hands off the stick and give a mighty push and I should be hurled out. Well having trimmed it fully forward, the minute I let go of the stick, the nose dropped and the next thing I knew I was floating about in the air. Now I looked up and I couldn’t see any parachute and I thought I must be upside down, so I looked between my legs and there was still no parachute. I looked round and found I hadn’t pulled the ripcord, which I did a bit smartly and, a second or so later, there was a satisfying thump and the parachute opened. I must say it’s a very soothing experience, to float about 1500’ up, it’s so quiet it’s amazing. The only thing was that the aircraft was still on fire and flying round and round on its own and I had visions of it colliding with me, but it didn’t.
Sitting in my parachute harness, surveying the landscape, I found there were fields all around except for one large copse and that seemed to be the place where I was headed. Now I know that if you pull on one side of the rigging the parachute will go one way and if pull on the other side it will go in the opposite direction, but there’s no method by which you can keep the parachute up there any longer than the force of gravity will allow. As I didn’t want to land any faster than I would normally do, I just let the parachute take me and I was dragged backwards through quite a few trees and eventually came to quite a pleasant halt, stuck in the top of the tree. So I undid my harness and climbed down and made my way to the edge of the copse, through a hedge and lo and behold, in the road, just the other side of the hedge was one old dear, who looked at me as I came through the hedge, and said,
“Would you like a cup of tea?”
I said ‘No thank you very much’, crawled out, and waved to my number 2 to show that I was alright and he disappeared back to Gravesend.
Now just after that a lady doctor arrived in her car and picked me up and took me to the nearest military base, which happened to be a Canadian dental centre. Now these characters had seen me fly over, emitting vast amounts of smoke and seen the other Spitfire and naturally assumed that the Spitfire had shot down a Jerry and I was the Jerry. So the CO, a colonel, had armed everybody with rifles and revolvers and anything else he could lay his hands on and they were all set to come out and pick me up and I think they were quite disappointed when I arrived.
Anyway, they were quite nice to me and I was bit scruffy, but they took me into the Officers’ Mess and forced a large whisky on me, and as you know I can’t stand whisky, but I managed to get it down. The only snag was, I’d left my pipe at Gravesend on the window ledge of the dining room, I remember it well. So they gave me a cigar and I smoked that, had a very nice meal, then the CO gave me his car and driver and I was taken to Shoreham.
There was a small hospital at Shoreham where I spent the night and had a check-up and the following morning I was taken to Shoreham aerodrome where the lads were going to fly me back to Gravesend in a Lysander. Well I must admit I wasn’t too popular with the lads at Shoreham. They had an air-sea rescue base there with a Walrus and they’d watched me coming across the Channel with smoke and everything else billowing out and they were looking forward to doing a bit of air-sea rescue and getting another notch on their gun-barrel or whatever they do and they were most upset when I chugged across Shoreham, still emitting smoke and baled out farther on! Anyway, they put me in this Lysander and took me back to Gravesend and to sit in the back of a Lysander when it lands is quite an experience. To begin with, when it slows down, enormous sort of shutters shoot out of the wing with a helluva clatter and it drops almost vertically, but they got me there quite safely.
Now, having landed I felt quite the little hero and I was walking up to the dispersal and spoke to Brian, Brian Kingcome, who congratulated me on getting out and getting home alright and I felt quite chuffed until he said,
“There is one point, Robbie, you don’t have to tell all the bloody German Air Force, you’re going to bale out!”
I felt quite a little hero for a time, especially when I had to explain exactly what it was like getting out and what I did and how, but my number 2 still insisted I would have been better off jumping into the Channel, with which I did not agree.
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The only perhaps applicable portion in the Pilot Notes (September 1946, 3rd edition) I have is,
Hood jettisoning
The hood may be jettisoned in an emergency by pulling the rubber knob inside the top of the hood forward and downward and then pushing the lower edge of the hood outwards with the elbows.
WARNING.—Before jettisoning the hood the seat should be lowered and the head then kept well down.
Hood jettisoning
The hood may be jettisoned in an emergency by pulling the rubber knob inside the top of the hood forward and downward and then pushing the lower edge of the hood outwards with the elbows.
WARNING.—Before jettisoning the hood the seat should be lowered and the head then kept well down.
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Bail Out procedure for Spitfire Mark IX
Thank you all for your interest and for the info. I have read the Pilot Notes - how curious that there is no mention at all of bailing out - and I have also turned up the page recommended by Taxydual - there is certainly no concensus of opinion there, so perhaps there just wasn`t a `one size fits all` procedure for all circumstances.
I thought perhaps you might like to know the reason for my enquiry. My eldest brother was killed in 1944 (age 21, just) and only recently I have been able to obtain the ORBs covering the day of his death. I quote below the relevant paragraph
(Third operation, fighter sweep of Lake Bracciano area) ...... Our homeward journey, in accordance with previous orders, was carried out at 4000 feet, instead of the usual 14-1600 feet for patrol work, in order to observe the condition of the bridges around Grossetto, all of which appeared to be quite serviceable. While there at approximately 1715 hours, F/O J.D. Hegarty reported engine trouble, and climbed to about 7000 feet emitting black smoke. His aircraft then emitted quantities of white smoke, and he called up and said he was going to bale out. He inverted the aircraft, but the nose dropped immediately, and crashed from a spiral dive with a tremendous splash, in the sea, approximately quarter mile off Marina di Grossetto. F/O Hegarty did not get out of the aircraft, which sank instantly, leaving only an oily smear on the water. He will be greatly missed by all, his playing of the accordian and piano being one of the mainstays of our concert party, of which he was the Officer i/c. End quote
Once again, my thanks to you all.
Best wishes JeanB
I thought perhaps you might like to know the reason for my enquiry. My eldest brother was killed in 1944 (age 21, just) and only recently I have been able to obtain the ORBs covering the day of his death. I quote below the relevant paragraph
(Third operation, fighter sweep of Lake Bracciano area) ...... Our homeward journey, in accordance with previous orders, was carried out at 4000 feet, instead of the usual 14-1600 feet for patrol work, in order to observe the condition of the bridges around Grossetto, all of which appeared to be quite serviceable. While there at approximately 1715 hours, F/O J.D. Hegarty reported engine trouble, and climbed to about 7000 feet emitting black smoke. His aircraft then emitted quantities of white smoke, and he called up and said he was going to bale out. He inverted the aircraft, but the nose dropped immediately, and crashed from a spiral dive with a tremendous splash, in the sea, approximately quarter mile off Marina di Grossetto. F/O Hegarty did not get out of the aircraft, which sank instantly, leaving only an oily smear on the water. He will be greatly missed by all, his playing of the accordian and piano being one of the mainstays of our concert party, of which he was the Officer i/c. End quote
Once again, my thanks to you all.
Best wishes JeanB
