What's new

The Great Escape

Windjammer

ELITE MEMBER
Nov 9, 2009
41,412
181
150,495
Country
Pakistan
Location
United Kingdom
Ejection Seats
All military fighter and bomber aircraft are equipped with ejection seats. If the plane is damaged in combat the pilot (and crew) can escape before the plane crashes. To eject the pilot pulls a handle and the next thing he knows he’s hopefully seeing his chute above him and damaged plane spiraling into the ground. Ejection seats work on a simple principle. Underneath each of the seat(s) is a rocket designed to shoot the crewmember out of the damaged plane. The seat is mounted on rails that guide the seat out of the plane. After clearing the plane the seat then falls away and a parachute deploys to gently land the crewmember/pilot.
Each type of military plane has a slightly different ejection sequence. On fighter planes they work by blowing the cockpit canopy off and then firing the rocket under the seat. On bombers they worked by blowing hatches off and then firing the crew up, or in some cases down, away from the aircraft.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
These always make for some intense viewing.

The "ejection decision" was practiced endlessly on the ground and in simulators. Too many guys delay the decision and end up in an envelope where escape is impossible.

My sister-in-law is an egress system expert, working for the Navy. While she was at Patuxent river, a Navy research facility, they experimented with Soviet, American, and British ejection seats. She declared the Soviet/Russian seats to be the best.

They are truly marvels of technology. The sequence of events that must happen quickly and perfectly is large. You've got canopy jettison, although some seats go through the canopy... then rocket boost, drogue-chute for the seat. A "seat kicker" device pops you free from the seat, and the main parachute is deployed. At high altitude, some systems will keep you in the seat while you free-fall to habitable air.

One of the huge problems pilots face is high-speed ejection. Above 400 knots, it is extremely violent, and there's a good chance of broken or dislocated arms or legs. Ejection over water, with your arms broken and useless, would put you in the water with your mask on, and the hose to the mask below the water level. Death by drowning.

To prevent this, the USAF and Navy developed a "horse collar" flotation device that would automatically inflate upon contact with water, and a system would also detach your mask... all automatically, so if you are unconscious and injured, you'd land in the water and float face up.

fighter_pilot.jpg


The horse collar can be seen on this guy ^^ quite clearly. and at each side of his helmet is the mechanism that will jettison the mask. So an entire ejection sequence with modern equipment would be:

- Jettison canopy
- fire seat motor; boost clear
- Seat drogue chute stabilizes man and seat
- pitot-static systems in the seat determine when to initiate man-seat separation
- Seat kicker fires; man-seat separation
- main canopy deployment
- survival kit and raft deploy
- automatic flotation device actuates in water
- mask is ejected

Very cool stuff!
 
Indeed sir, the ejection sequence is nothing short of an engineering masterpiece.
What I find even more fascinating is ejection through the canopy....... with all the thick glass flying around an airman's body in a slipstream.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Haha! This is a great old training film that I clearly remember viewing before, and the guys who give their stories make some good points regarding "The ejection decision." Those who did eject correctly all said "I thought about this in my mind long before that mission where I had to do it."

The rules were simple. "Am I in control of the aircraft? No? If below 10,000 feet, eject."

The F-111 in that video uses a capsule rather than a seat. When they eject, the entire crew compartment comes out and they are protected from wind blast. Since the F-111 was a high-speed, low-altitude penetrator, they needed something like this. A normal ejection at 700+ knots will usually prove fatal.

For a controlled ejection, like an unlandable gear configuration, you want to be slow and level.

Note the interesting colors in the crew parachute... panels of orange, white, and green. In combat, you bury or hide the orange and white, and use the green part to make tents, backpacks, and other survival gear. In peacetime, the orange panel can be used to signal.
 
Thanks for the informative input sir, however one can all but wonder what goes through an airman's mind when he sees the ground or the built up area getting bigger by the second.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
These always make for some intense viewing.

The "ejection decision" was practiced endlessly on the ground and in simulators. Too many guys delay the decision and end up in an envelope where escape is impossible.

My sister-in-law is an egress system expert, working for the Navy. While she was at Patuxent river, a Navy research facility, they experimented with Soviet, American, and British ejection seats. She declared the Soviet/Russian seats to be the best.

They are truly marvels of technology. The sequence of events that must happen quickly and perfectly is large. You've got canopy jettison, although some seats go through the canopy... then rocket boost, drogue-chute for the seat. A "seat kicker" device pops you free from the seat, and the main parachute is deployed. At high altitude, some systems will keep you in the seat while you free-fall to habitable air.

One of the huge problems pilots face is high-speed ejection. Above 400 knots, it is extremely violent, and there's a good chance of broken or dislocated arms or legs. Ejection over water, with your arms broken and useless, would put you in the water with your mask on, and the hose to the mask below the water level. Death by drowning.

To prevent this, the USAF and Navy developed a "horse collar" flotation device that would automatically inflate upon contact with water, and a system would also detach your mask... all automatically, so if you are unconscious and injured, you'd land in the water and float face up.

fighter_pilot.jpg


The horse collar can be seen on this guy ^^ quite clearly. and at each side of his helmet is the mechanism that will jettison the mask. So an entire ejection sequence with modern equipment would be:

- Jettison canopy
- fire seat motor; boost clear
- Seat drogue chute stabilizes man and seat
- pitot-static systems in the seat determine when to initiate man-seat separation
- Seat kicker fires; man-seat separation
- main canopy deployment
- survival kit and raft deploy
- automatic flotation device actuates in water
- mask is ejected

Very cool stuff!
Always thought what was that life jacket type thing?,,thanks chogy.
 
The Flight suit is also colored Orange inside, so in case of Peace time ejection, it can be used for signaling, orange being a vibrant color. The harrier sequence is a good piece of engineering. The canopy shatters , then the pilot goes.
 
why dont they put ejection seats in tanks sir?like tank crew detecting an armour piercing shell coming towards it and crew ejecting.
is a pilot more expensive than a tank driver?:undecided:
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)


Pakistan Defence Latest Posts

Back
Top Bottom