How an old friend ended his career in the USMC

[ILDiver]

Actually trux, if you watch the video, the tail does not lessen the impact on the front end. The forward movement is stopped by the friction of the tail dragging the ground and accelerates the downward motion of the nose.

As for airbags. All in all, these types of incidents are extremely rare. Adding such a system could potentially do more harm than good. Not saying it could not happen, but the stress on a system is a lot different. Will the system malfunction in a cobra with a rapid pitch and speed change? Will it blow out on a hard landing, or carrier? The systems in todays aircraft are so amazing even compared to F-4's. The 0-0 seats are unreal. It's easy to say watching that bailing out would have been the better option. But I'm not the one that was at the controls during those critical seconds making the choice with the information you have available in the same sliver of time.

*I love fighter aircraft, so I'm kind of adding to the thread to keep the discussion going, not bashing any idea just to be a jerk*

 

[trux]

Actually trux, if you watch the video, the tail does not lessen the impact on the front end. The forward movement is stopped by the friction of the tail dragging the ground and accelerates the downward motion of the nose.

What I meant is that the vector of impact, not the deceleration level were playing positive role. Hitting first with the tail while having the nose relatively high in the air, means that the deceleration vector pushed the pilot more into the seat than forward. Of course the forward deceleration due the friction was still immense, but nowhere comparable to a frontal hit or a nose down dip.

As for the airbag - you are certainly right that malfunctioning, unlike at a passenger seat, would be a fatal failure, and may be well the reason for avoiding such technology.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

A couple of comments prompted by the last couple of posts.

If an airbag in the instrument panel malfunctioned during the catapult shot it would push the stick back in the pilot's lap and cause the aircraft to over rotate and stall. When I was in flight school, we were shown film of a cat shot of an F-4 in which the radar screen had not been bolted back in after maintenance. The aircraft went almost straight up and the pilot ejected in front of the ship.

On the subject of zero-zero seats, perhaps I should elaborate for those not in the know. It refers to an ejection seat that you can use successfully sitting dead still on the ground- zero altitude-zero airspeed- and still survive. For comparison, it might be useful to compare it to seats that came just before. Those could get you high enough to survive a zero altitude ejection as long as you had enough forward airspeed so that the chute deployed horizontally before you swung under it. But a zero-sero seat has to get you high enough so that you have room to fall vertically and let the chute deploy before you hit the ground. It does it this way.

When you pull the face curtain, an explosive charge starts the ejection seat up the rails. After it travels a few feet, a second charge is ignited to further accelerate you. There is a cable coiled under the seat, with one end bolted to the deck of the aircraft and the other end connected to the sear on a rocket motor. When the cable is extended fully, the rocket motor fires and continues to push the seat and occupant even higher in the air so that there is enough altitude for the chute to deploy. The simpler alternative would have been to have a bigger explosive charge, but that would have broken the pilots back and/or neck.

OK not that you are edikated, back to Jerry's problem. His aircraft had a zero-zero seat. But he also had a very sink rate before impact with the runway. If he had tried to eject, simple vector analysis says that he would have been pushed upward from platform that was falling away from the seat, so it might have canceled out all the upward thrust of the explosive charges. I doubt he would have separated from the seat before hitting the ground.


BTW, even the F-4s that I was flying before I retired in 1980 had zero-zero seats, but I'm happy to say that I never tried one out.

 

[ILDiver]

BTW, even the F-4s that I was flying before I retired in 1980 had zero-zero seats, but I'm happy to say that I never tried one out.

Yes, but the ACES II was leaps and bounds better. There are a lot of horror stories about the Martin Baker. Mis-fires, partial ejections.... Some bad ones about maint. guys short cutting the T.O.'s and setting the seat off by mistake, while sitting upside down in the seat with their head under the front panel.

I just meant the seats since the F-4 hare so much better. And the F-4's seat was a great seat in it's day and not that long ago really.

 

[ILDiver]

On the seats... We had a landing gear failure on a QF-106. The Major could not put the gear down and the drop tanks were welded on, so no chance to belly land. This was about 1993, an F-106 seat had not been fired in a LONG time. He flew around for a little while waiting for the squadrons drone recovery boat to get out of the bay. The boat was used to pick up smaller drones after a shoot. Anyway, he ejected fine, but those seats were living on some serious extended service life.

The QF-106's were grounded for 30 days to be looked over. Then one flew a small manned flight late afternoon after they were cleared. The next morning 2 Lt Colonels went out for a flight. The pair of 106's rolled down the runway. The lead bird had one of his main landing gear come off about 50' off the runway and strike the wing, dumping fuel and causing a big fireball. Bird #2 calls out, your on....bird one ejects. The second LtC is now in formation with an unmanned fireball. There was a row of 106's on the far side of the field then a gap, and then the Alert aircraft. The wreckage hit the field in that gap. LtC said the chute opened at power line height and he got one full swing and slapped into the ground.

Funny part was that a buddy of mine was a cop at the alert facility that day and went out to where the chute landed. LtC was talking to my friend, leaning against the truck. 5 min. later the EMTs show up, get out a gurney, back board, get everything squared away. Asked him how he was. He has a sprained ankle. They strapped him to the board, put the neck brace on him. I know they have to do what they have to do, but it was funny.

BTW, good point on the downward drift of the 18 just before impact.

 

[trux]

As for the airbag - it cannot be under the stick, of course, but there are certainly other possibilities - it can be deployed from the belt (as at some passenger jet airbags), from the top, from the sides, or even from the suit or helmet like at some motorbike airbags. Another airbag might be used to protect the knees and feet.

As for the reliability - I believe that misfiring would be similarly critical at F1 monoposts, but airbags are used there.

On the other hand I understand that such crashes are extremely rare, and when they happen without the pilot ejecting beforehand, the conditions for survival even with airbags are slim. The deployed airbag would also seriously hinder the possibility to eject after the crash, though it is more likely that it would not be physically possible after such crash anyway.

I understand that adding the airbag may have more disadvantages than it can outweigh. I just mentioned it, because the very accident described in this thread was likely one of the cases where it would certainly help to reduce the extent of injuries.

 

[ILDiver]

Speaking of protecting the legs. The F-4's seat had leg straps that would pull the feet in tight to the seat upon ejection. It was so the feet and knees would not hit the console. Bill may know better if they were widely used or why they did not continue to use them after the Martin Baker. I do remember some stories of failed seat seperation because of them.

 

[Pastor]

The Martin Baker is still in use in the Hawk fast jet trainers here in the UK. I got to see them last summer in a visit, they have those leg retracting straps on them. Seem like a sensible idea considering the whack they leave the aircraft with

 

[Fondueset]

Since we're talking vintage birds - how about the F104 - DOWNward firing ejection seat!!
F106s hail from back around the time the SR71 was the YF12A interceptor. I remember seeing F101s during the cherry festival here - also B57s and even an Avro Vulcan one day out over leelanau county - that was weird.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

I had totally forgotten about those leg restraint straps until now, but yes, we had them on our Martin Baker seats. However, my recollection is that they were not intended to keep the legs and feet from hitting the instrument panel on ejection- the upward acceleration would serve to do that. They were to keep the legs from flailing once we were out in the airstream.

But speaking of Martin Baker, I'm reminded of one of the most dramatic films I ever saw in the ready room. I guess it must have been about the time that they were developing the zero-zero seat, and it showed a cockpit mockup sitting in a clearing in the forest. There was a guy in the cockpit smoking a cigarette, and several others standing around looking at him.

There was no canopy on the cockpit, and the guy snuffed out his cigarette on the outside of the cockpit, reached up and pulled the face curtain, and departed the picture straight up. It was a hell of a shock, and we wondered how much they paid that guy.

 

[Fondueset]

The Ejection Site

A web site dedicated to ejection seats....

 

[BatRay]

Since we're talking vintage birds - how about the F104 - DOWNward firing ejection seat!!
F106s hail from back around the time the SR71 was the YF12A interceptor. I remember seeing F101s during the cherry festival here - also B57s and even an Avro Vulcan one day out over leelanau county - that was weird.

:inlove SR-71, now that is a hell of an aircraft.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

:inlove SR-71, now that is a hell of an aircraft.

It sure is. I recall seeing one doing touch and go landings at Kadena AFB on Okinawa, and it disappeared into the blue sky on every "go."

Another interesting thing is how leaky it is. The Air Force is so much tidier and fastidious than the Navy and Marine Corps, so I was surprised when I taxied by a couple of SR-71s at an AFB and they were both standing in puddles of jet fuel. It turns out that they route the fuel right under the skin of the aircraft to cool the skin at very high speeds, but if its not hot enough, the metal shrinks and opens up the seams a bit, so it seeps fuel sitting on the deck.

Or at least that's what I was told.

 

[Fondueset]

That's true Bill - the SR71 didn't tighten up till it got hot. Kelly Johnson was chief designer - same guy also designed the P38 Lightning, F104 Starfighter, U2/TR1 and many others. Quite the career and very leading edge. The Sr71 started life as the YF12a Strategic interceptor - It was armed with nuclear tipped air to air missiles in bays in the fuselage .

 

[BatRay]

Yeah, the Blackbird was designed to rattle a bit due to heat expansion. I hadn't heard about it leaking fuel that way, but it makes sense. Seriously though, what an amazing plane. They flew from New York to London in less than two hours, including a slow-down to refuel, over 1000 missiles launched against them with no hits, horizontal flight of 85,068 feet and speed of 2,193 miles per hour in sustained flight, and designed with a slide rule! I feel deprived that they are no longer in service.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

I flew the RF-4B, the photo recon version of the Phantom, in Vietnam, but of course that was tactical reconnaissance rather than strategic by the SR-71. While it was fun to be down there at 100 feet and 500 knots some times, I always thought it would be cool to be up there over 80 grand thumbing my nose at everyone.

When I was a flight instructor in a Navy squadron in Texas, our operations officer was a Navy Lt Cdr who had just returned from a tour in the intel section of Commander in Chief Pacific HQ in Hawaii. He said that on one clear and cloudless day, they sent an SR-71 straight up the spine of North Vietnam and it completed most of their outstanding photo requirements without getting a detectable reaction from the NVA. And then it turned out over the Tonkin Gulf over our fleet and they didn't see it either.

 

[BatRay]

Amazing, amazing stuff. The SR-71 could take accurate pictures of a license plate from 80,000 feet. The standard evasive maneuver was simply to accelerate, and none were ever shot down. It must have been really cool to see them in action, Bill.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

Well, I never saw them in action unless seeing that one doing touch and go landings at Kadena counts as action. Other than that my only sightings were taxiing by them on the ground, and that was very seldom.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

The SR-71 could take accurate pictures of a license plate from 80,000 feet.

I don't know about license plates, but on low level runs in North Vietnam I got photos of guys feeding the guns that were shooting at me, and even a couple of smoke rings at the end of barrels sticking out of bushes.

Of course I couldn't see that until I looked at the photos later- I was too busy trying to stay on my flight line and keep from running into the ground.

The SR-71 had speed and altitude, but all we had going for us was speed. We weren't exactly out of range, but we hoped to go by so fast that they didn't have time to react. The standard tactic for other aircraft is to jinx, but a photo aircraft can't jinx because it has to hold the camera steady, which means keeping wings level at least while over the target run.

Another reason we needed to go at least a bit fast is that the F-4 had a bad habit of leaving a trail of black smoke that was visible for miles, even when you couldn't see the aircraft that was leaving the trail. But if you went into minimum afterburner, that did away with the smoke so that they couldn't see you coming so easily.

 

[BatRay]

Now all the Blackbirds do is sit in museums, so however limited your contact was, it's more than people get to see these days.

How low were you flying? Did you have any form of defense?