Warbirds News wrote:
Tom Moungovan wrote:
Impressive footage. If you look at the cockpit image, notice the vertical device just ahead of the canopy locks on the sill. That was termed an M-11 Thruster, there was one on the left hand sill as well and after the canopy was unlocked by another thruster during ejection, the two M-11s extended and popped the canopy up enough so that the wind stream caught it & tore it right off.
The F-104 had a fairly involved egress system but it worked ok. I worked on them for about 3 years while stationed at Edwards AFB in the mid to late 60's.
Tom have you meet either Scrappy Johnson or Dave Skilling?
No, I'm sorry but I have not. I was at Edwards from June 1966 until the end of May, 1969 when I got an 8 month early-out. Did these two gentlemen work at Edwards? There were a lot of contractors there and some were crew chiefs. Our Base Commander when I first got there was BG Hugh Manson. His successor was General Slay. General Manson used to come down to the base photo shop sometimes and visit. He knew the Sgt. who ran the place and was a friendly sort.
F-104 seats were frequently removed to access other equipment, so we worked on these almost daily, while some aircraft like our B-58, T-37s, F-106 did not see near as much work from our Egress Shop. The 104 seat was heavy. Some seats, you could lift and handle by yourself, but the one out of the 104 took two people, one on each side to swing it out from under the aircraft after it was removed. If the seat was not going to be out of the aircraft for a long period, we'd sometimes wait out on the flightline for it to go back. If it was for more than an hour or so, we'd put it in the back of our Econoline van and take it back to our shop where it was hung up on the wall, supported by a cable.
I really thought they were were designed. No doubt they were modified by the time that they went out of service.
They had one feature that you had to be really careful of and that was the arms that deployed the arm restraints during ejection. You did not lift out on the ends of these as too much force could shear a pin in the thruster under the seat and fire the catapult while you were around. We always de-armed the seat first before even getting into the aircraft by disconnecting the hose right at the catapult and then putting tape over it to prevent FOD (foreign object damage).
I was on a ladder late one afternoon helping a friend who was a crew chief on an F-104. The pilot wanted to get somebodies attention and started to quickly rise up off the seat. His flight suit caught on the arm so I smacked him as hard as I could right in the sterum and pushed him right back. He immediately reddened, but asked if I had a really good reason for doing that. When I explained what had happened, he got pretty serious and quietly asked me to do what I had to do . I safety wired the arm down and then disconnected the B nut on the catapult. We were both interviewed after but nobody caught hell over it. He had not pulled it far enough to shear the pin.
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