Ejection seat
An ejection seat is a mechanism installed in an aircraft that is intended to save the pilot or other crew members in the event of an emergency. Most of designs include the canopy coming off and the seat being propelled out of the aircraft by a rocket motor or explosive charge, carrying the pilot with it. The ejection seat releases a parachute once it is outside of the aircraft. To prevent a collision, the seats of two-seat aircraft are ejected at distinct angles.
Pilots had to manually remove the aircraft canopy in order to climb out before ejection seats were invented. Lives can be saved with ejection seats. But if the aircraft catches fire, can military pilots eject?
B-52 raids during Operation Linebacker II
Doug Constantine, former US Air Force pilot, recalls on Quora;
‘I was a USAF pilot and never ejected but knew several friends that did.
‘One story I can tell is that I had a good friend, named Mike, who was a Bombardier-Radar Navigator on a B-52 that was shot down in the 12/72 bombing raids [Operation Linebacker II over North Vietnam]. The plane was on its bomb run with the bomb doors open (read high radar cross section) when a SAM blew up just beside the left side of the plane near the cockpit.
‘It immediately killed the pilot and the Electronic Warfare Officer. The co-pilot kept the plane going through the bomb run to bombs away when a second SAM hit the plane and rest of the crew members (co-pilot, navigator, and tail gunner) ejected.
B-52 coming apart
‘But Mike was stuck in his seat by the force of the airplane coming apart and could not even lift his ejection seat handles. During all this, the plane, of course, was moving forward at 400 mph as he tried to eject. It was spinning and on fire when suddenly the center wing tank, located right behind where the Navigator and the Bombardier-Radar Navigator sit, blew up.
‘The explosion blew Mike out of the plane and he came down many miles downstream of the remaining crewmembers.
‘USAF pilots in the vicinity in other B-52s and also in F-4s saw the whole thing, including the explosion that blew him out of the wreckage but it was at night and nobody saw his chute or heard his beeper.’
Constantine concludes;
‘I remember his wife called me and we talked, and she of course was very shaken up as the other crew members were accounted for. I told her we would all pray but don’t forget that we didn’t have all the facts.
‘Sure enough, two months later, in February of 73 when the POWs were repatriated there was Mike, alive and well. A very good ending for a great guy.’
Photo by U.S. Air Force