Ejection seat or not?

[MX304]

Warbird 1...good discussion.

There is one difference between hitting the ground in a jet and in a piston warbird...in a jet, the fire will be behind you; in a single-engine piston, the fire will be in front of you. Having a big hot engine full of fuel and oil collapse back towards you is not a fun experience.

As opposed to taking a hot spinning burning engine up the rear?

[n5151ts]

I am over an inch shorter due to an eject....nope its not fun.

But at least you are still alive, that is the whole point of this discussion!

I have to work another 129 years!

[Curtis Block]

Great discussion guys.

Valid points and observations all around.

Keep it up, I think I'm learning something.

[mgeorge51]

Another point

Recently a PT-22 was involved in a crash where the engine actually broke off during impact at the front cockpit. Although injured both occupants survived. Also remember the recent T-6 pictures with a similar ending.

So my point is that with a piston warbird the engine/propellor will take up the deceleration forces and sometimes leave the aircraft to further help reduce the forces on the occupants.

But in a jet as you slow down very quickly the heavy engine may leave it's mounts on its way through the fuel bag, just before it explodes on the pilot.

I believe the stall speed of most straight wing jets are very close to that of a P-51. Of course swept wings are something totally different.

Another special consideration for the hot seats. I believe one of the stipulations to keep them hot is to inform your local airport authority as you are essentially bringing high explosives to the airport. Anyone with hot seats definitely need to make sure the local fire department knows of the explosives but just doing so may cause the federallies to target your now safer but.
I have had a small experience with the BATF in the past and I do not wish to ever have another. With them you are guilty as soon as you shake hands.

Unfortunately just another hastle in a long list that needs to be overcome by a burning desire to fly these things.

Best to be comfortable with the risks before each flight and be trained and ready for all emergencies. I think jets even with their better reliability are not as safe, in general as the average piston fighter.

[CAPFlyer]

1) You can't compare piston fighters to jet fighters/trainers. First of all piston engined airplanes weren't designed to have ejection seats. They're not part of the original aircraft design. You have to work with what you are given.

Yes you can. Here's where you're missing what I'm writing. I'm talking specifically about certain jets - Russian Trainers (L-29 and L-39). These aircraft have wings just as thick as a P-51's (although the "thick" part is mid-chord instead of forward chord) however they are probably as strong or stronger than the P-51's wing for one reason - they use titanium in their construction. Any of the other aircraft like the MiG's should definitely have active seats, and I've agreed with that. I've also said that their hot/cold status should be based on what you're using it for when you're talking about the more common trainer types.

2) The vast majority of piston-driven warbirds fly slower than the vast majority of jet warbirds (there are exceptions, though). The number one most important thing (other than landing surface) in surviving a deadstick landing or ditching off the runway environment is speed - pure and simple. Whether an airplane can dissipate the kinetic energy before it disintegrates is key. On average, because a typical prop-driven warbird is slower and can usually fly slower (has slower stall speed), it has more advantage to survival in off-airport landings.

Again, this depends. If you look at the L-29 and L-39 which were build to survive the rigors of training and flying from dirt and gravel strips, the aircraft were designed to deal with much the same stresses as the piston aircraft were. In addition, their landing and stall speeds are definitely comparable to most piston fighters like the P-51 and Corsair, even though you do tend to carry more speed during the approach, but that's more due to needing to give the engine time to spool up (i.e. you'll bleed more speed pitching out of the approach than with a piston so you need more cushion between your approach speed and stall speed to allow for that bleed off) than the plane being capable of flying at the same speed. And again, the aircraft were designed with just what you speak about in mind - off airport landings. The belly skins are stressed for such an event, and the aircraft have come out of such events (in military service) with little cosmetic and no structural damage.

3) Most typical prop-driven warbirds were designed to sustain battle damage and get the pilot back home. Because of this, most of those warbirds are built extremely tough. Remember there were no ejection seats in widespread operational use during W.W. II. The designers had to build the aircraft tough to not only withstand enemy bullets and shrapnel, but also to survive ditchings. With the advent of jets, the design philosophy changed and one of the most important criteria was to build an aircraft to be light and manueverable. This was necessary due to the limited amount of thrust available in early jet engines. More modern jets don't have to be as concerned about weight as the early jet designers, though. Since ejection seats were now standard on single or tandem seating jets, the designers didn't have to worry so much about surviving a ditching. The ejection seat would get the pilot out of the aircraft instead of having to deadstick it in.

And for some reason the L-39 and L-29 designed not only as trainers but light attack aircraft and attack trainers weren't? Sorry, but this premise is not valid as it makes assumptions that can't be supported by actual facts. Just because a plane has ejection seats doesn't mean that the designers have less need to get the plane home in one piece. A crashed plane is a crashed plane no matter what kind of survival equipment it has. All designers design the planes to be as survivable as possible because you want to reuse the plane, not throw it away the minute something goes wrong.

4) Prop-driven warbirds have huge thick, tough wings. Compare that against a very thin, high critical Mach number jet wing. Which do you think would dissipate energy better in an off-airport ditching - the thin one or the thick one built for toughness?

Depends on what it's made of. The L-29 and L-39 were built for it. Again, there's considerations to be made here. A MiG-21 or MiG-23 which are primarily fighters have more need for an ejection seat as they're fighters and not built for some of the things we (as museums and civilian operators) do with them in showing them instead of fighting them. However, the trainers are built with much more ruggedness and capability in that capacity as their primary goal is to train, not fight, so less weight is taken up with the pointy end stuff and more of it is taken in the keep the guy alive stuff.

5) Prop-driven warbirds also have a big huge propeller and engine mass up front. Jets do not. The big prop and engine mass will tend to protect the pilot more and act as sort of a shield and buffer against things which will hit it. The prop also has more of a tendancy to dissipate energy because the prop will usually be the first thing to strike the ground in an off-airport ditching...

Yes, but I've also seen the pictures of the accidents where the plane burned on impact trapping the pilot because the engine blew a piston and the fire engulfed the cockpit. At least if I have an engine let go in a jet the movement of the plane forward tends to keep the fire behind me and the fact I'm taking off into the wind helps keep it that way.

It would be safer to do so, IF there was a practical way to do it. Because ejection seats are not part of the original manufacturers specification, it would be a nightmare to attempt to do so.

This statement (and the rest of the paragraph) makes me think that you missed the point of my statement about using the tool appropriately even with your statement later that you agree that there's a limit to when they should be employed. Ejection seats are not the end-all. You kinda get the point later on though when you talk about the parachute extraction system. There are better (and safer) ways to get out of many of these airplanes. It's more training than equipment that makes it that way. Ejection seats in too many cases are used as a crutch to excuse poor decision making by the designers and the trainers just as there are quite a few BRS (Ballistic Recovery System) activations that have occurred because the pilot made bad decisions, not because of an Act of God or the airplane mechanically failing them.

Oh, and about the engine coming off the mounts and through the pilot - find me an accident report of any jet where that happened during a properly performed emergency landing where that was the sole cause of death. I've never heard of it happening. Those mounts are extremely strong and their highest point of strength is in the longitudinal direction. The force of deceleration is in the exact direction as the primary stress force acted upon the mounts during normal engine operation. A properly performed belly landing shouldn't put any undue longitudinal forces on the aircraft that it wouldn't experience anyway. Again, how many belly landings of aircraft have we seen over the years? If the engine mounts on ANY airplane broke simply due to the longitudinal deceleration of the aircraft, the pilots would be dead too because you'd almost have to run into a brick wall and stop instantly to get the required force. A piston engine typically separates because it's stressed in directions the mounts aren't designed to be - vertically and aft, but even that takes a ton of force to do and usually results from impacting an object and not as a normal part of the slide-out.

[warbird1]

I'm talking specifically about certain jets - Russian Trainers (L-29 and L-39). These aircraft have wings just as thick as a P-51's (although the "thick" part is mid-chord instead of forward chord) however they are probably as strong or stronger than the P-51's wing for one reason - they use titanium in their construction. .

O.K., I'll give you that, if you limit it only to those 2 aircraft. But that advantage is negated by several factors, which I'll talk about in a minute.

Again, this depends. If you look at the L-29 and L-39 which were build to survive the rigors of training and flying from dirt and gravel strips, the aircraft were designed to deal with much the same stresses as the piston aircraft were. In addition, their landing and stall speeds are definitely comparable to most piston fighters like the P-51 and Corsair, even though you do tend to carry more speed during the approach, but that's more due to needing to give the engine time to spool up (i.e. you'll bleed more speed pitching out of the approach than with a piston so you need more cushion between your approach speed and stall speed to allow for that bleed off) than the plane being capable of flying at the same speed. And again, the aircraft were designed with just what you speak about in mind - off airport landings. The belly skins are stressed for such an event, and the aircraft have come out of such events (in military service) with little cosmetic and no structural damage..

Those airplanes may be stressed for that, but it doesn't necessarily mean it would be safer for operation here in the U.S. Russia is a HUGE country with not nearly the population density as the United States. The L-29/39 may have been designed with off-airport landings in mind, but the vast majority of the land in Russia is grassy steppes and flat land. There are exceptions of course, but aren't a lot of Russian Air Force bases in some pretty obscure, desolate locations, away from civilization and population centers? Would an L-29/39 landing in a population center or out in the rock deserts of the Southwest necessarily come away unscathed? I think that "toughness" that they built in would not come in nearly as useful as you think. All the more reason to operate it with a hot seat.

5) Prop-driven warbirds also have a big huge propeller and engine mass up front. Jets do not. The big prop and engine mass will tend to protect the pilot more and act as sort of a shield and buffer against things which will hit it. The prop also has more of a tendancy to dissipate energy because the prop will usually be the first thing to strike the ground in an off-airport ditching...

Yes, but I've also seen the pictures of the accidents where the plane burned on impact trapping the pilot because the engine blew a piston and the fire engulfed the cockpit. At least if I have an engine let go in a jet the movement of the plane forward tends to keep the fire behind me and the fact I'm taking off into the wind helps keep it that way.

There are always exceptions to everything, but by and large, more mass up front will tend to protect the pilot from getting hurt and dissipate energy better through the crash. Piston airplanes will do this, while jets won't.

This statement (and the rest of the paragraph) makes me think that you missed the point of my statement about using the tool appropriately even with your statement later that you agree that there's a limit to when they should be employed. Ejection seats are not the end-all. .

I get it and I never claimed they were an end-all, be-all. I stated several times that training is the absolute key to using ejections seats. If you use them, you had better know how to use them effectively and within their capabilities.

It's more training than equipment that makes it that way. Ejection seats in too many cases are used as a crutch to excuse poor decision making by the designers and the trainers just as there are quite a few BRS (Ballistic Recovery System) activations that have occurred because the pilot made bad decisions, not because of an Act of God or the airplane mechanically failing them.

I agree completely! There are a lot of pilots out there that use ejection seats to maximize their time to deal with emergencies. Nothing could be further from the truth! An ejection seat does NOT give you more time or give you carte blanche to make decisions which are more shakey than if you didn't have one.

Oh, and about the engine coming off the mounts and through the pilot - find me an accident report of any jet where that happened during a properly performed emergency landing where that was the sole cause of death. I've never heard of it happening. Those mounts are extremely strong and their highest point of strength is in the longitudinal direction. The force of deceleration is in the exact direction as the primary stress force acted upon the mounts during normal engine operation. A properly performed belly landing shouldn't put any undue longitudinal forces on the aircraft that it wouldn't experience anyway. Again, how many belly landings of aircraft have we seen over the years? If the engine mounts on ANY airplane broke simply due to the longitudinal deceleration of the aircraft, the pilots would be dead too because you'd almost have to run into a brick wall and stop instantly to get the required force. A piston engine typically separates because it's stressed in directions the mounts aren't designed to be - vertically and aft, but even that takes a ton of force to do and usually results from impacting an object and not as a normal part of the slide-out.

Here is what mgeorge51 wrote:

But in a jet as you slow down very quickly the heavy engine may leave it's mounts on its way through the fuel bag, just before it explodes on the pilot.

What he was saying is in a sudden deceleration, where you might hit obstacles on the ground. You are talking about a normal dead-stick landing on flat or semi-flat ground. You two are talking about two different things. George's point is valid in jets. Engines will tend to break their mounts and slide through the cockpit as it's sprayed with fuel contained behind the pilot. In prop-driven warbirds, most of the fuel is in the wings, away from the pilot. Also, the big engine up front will snap off and separate from the fuselage a lot of times. A jet will just kill you with the engines from behind (assuming they're not on pods or nacelles on the wing). This is certainly the case on the L-29/39. George was talking about a non-normal off-airport landing on rocky terrain or terrain with obstacles which would cause sudden decelerations.

O.K., I'll make my case again, specifically with the L-29 and L-39 in mind. Let's keep everything equal and only talk about the differences.

First the similarities:
1) Approximately same stall speed
2) Approximately the same weight

Now, we take 2 airplanes, one a Mustang and one an L-39. The L-39 has a cold seat. They both lose power on initial takeoff for whatever reason. They are taking off around a non-flat or semi-populated area around the airfield of departure with obstacles on the ground. The Mustang has several advantages of survivability over the L-39 in the event of a loss of power on takeoff:

1) The huge prop and engine are in front of the pilot. This will act as an energy dissipator and tend to protect the pilot from obstacles on the ground. The largest density of mass on both the Mustang and the L-39 are their engines. On the Mustang it is in front, on the nose. On the L-39 it is behind the cockpit, where it could slam into the cockpit upon sudden deceleration. The L-39 has a tiny, puny, nose section which will break much more easily and afford very little pilot protection from obstacles on the ground.

2) All of the gas on the Mustang is in the wings away from the pilot. Forward momentum will ensure that the wings will most likely stay clear of the cockpit section, thus ensuring that the cockpit doesn't catch on fire. On the L-39, the gas is in the fuselage. Upon hitting an obstacle, forward momentum will ensure that the gas will be sprayed or leaked into the cockpit section.

3) A Mustang, upon hitting a large flock of birds, might incur damage, but the engine will generally keep running. An L-39, upon hitting a large flock of birds, will most likely FOD out the engine or in the least cause a compressor stall. Either one will result in a sustantial loss of power and immediate altitude loss.

4) The landing gear on a Mustang retracts slower and stays down longer on initial takeoff than an L-39. With a loss of power in either aircraft, the landing gear is likely to either still be down or in transit on the Mustang. This will likely mean that the gear with shear off on the Mustang upon ground contact, thus providing more energy dissipation. The L-39 will most likely have it's gear already retracted and be in a clean configuration, except for takeoff flaps. The "clean" or no-gear hanging configuration of the L-39 will provide less resistance to stopping when it makes ground contact, thus taking longer to come to a stop, thereby increasing the chances of pilot injury or death.

[Randy Haskin]

Gotta say, this is a very strange discussion.

[PinecastleAAF]

Did the Vought Cutlass even have an ejection seat? Wikipedia is sure hard on the old girl.

.

[Tom Moungovan]

Anyone here know of a good source of photos of the PB2Y-3, PB2Y-3R and PB2Y-5 type in service? I'd like to have a few as my father flew them in WW2.
Any books ever written on Naval flying boats?
Any help appreciated, thanks.

[famvburg]

Surely they didn't have ejection seats!

Anyone here know of a good source of photos of the PB2Y-3, PB2Y-3R and PB2Y-5 type in service? I'd like to have a few as my father flew them in WW2.
Any books ever written on Naval flying boats?
Any help appreciated, thanks.

[famvburg]

I would think the volatality of the fuels involved should be considered as well. AvGas is generally more volatile than Jet Fuel.

Warbird 1...good discussion.

There is one difference between hitting the ground in a jet and in a piston warbird...in a jet, the fire will be behind you; in a single-engine piston, the fire will be in front of you. Having a big hot engine full of fuel and oil collapse back towards you is not a fun experience.

[famvburg]

I don't recall the pilot's name, but in the early days of Desert Storm, he was either an A-7 or A-10 pilot, IIRC, ejected. When his pic was plastered all over the news, most folks were upset at how the Iraqis had beat the guy up. No, he had been treated quite well by his captors & his facial injuries were the result of ejecting. Granted, he was probably healthier for ejecting than 'riding it down', but from stuff I've read & heard, he got off light.

Yea, that's understandable. I would want to die too, instead of getting banged up by an ejection.

That statement makes no sense.

When Jimmy went to Poland to acquire his Migs he was told by several pilots who flew them that you DO NOT want to eject because their statement was "IF YOU LIVE THRU IT you will probably Never walk again" as they had witnessed this first hand from fellow pilots that did eject...

Thanks for that statement. Now, it sheds more light on why he chose that. Still, I would at least want to have the option. There are certain situations where an ejection would still be desirable over certain death from an uncontrollable airplane. I at least understand his rationale for it.

[warbird1]

Anyone here know of a good source of photos of the PB2Y-3, PB2Y-3R and PB2Y-5 type in service? I'd like to have a few as my father flew them in WW2.
Any books ever written on Naval flying boats?
Any help appreciated, thanks.

Wrong thread, Tom!

[warbird1]

I don't recall the pilot's name, but in the early days of Desert Storm, he was either an A-7 or A-10 pilot, IIRC, ejected. When his pic was plastered all over the news, most folks were upset at how the Iraqis had beat the guy up. No, he had been treated quite well by his captors & his facial injuries were the result of ejecting. Granted, he was probably healthier for ejecting than 'riding it down', but from stuff I've read & heard, he got off light.

The person you were thinking of was USN LT Jeffrey Zaun. He was the Naval A-6 pilot who was put on Iraqi t.v. with the beat up face. In reality, he punched himself in the face many times, because he knew he was going to be used as a propaganda tool. By making himself look beat-up and coerced, he knew he could diminish the effectiveness of the Iraqi propaganda. His injuries were all self-sustained and had nothing to do with his ejection. If you remember, he is the one who's video on CNN in early '91 caused such an uproar across the nation.

[mjanovec]

I am curious if the placement of the engine on the P-39 greatly affected the pilot's survivability odds in a crash landing. Not only did you have the engine rightbehind the pilot's seat, but you had a spinning shaft running between the pilot's legs.