EJECTION DECISION

we should have good terrain masking back here yeah we're safe now except for the baron [Music] I'll you coming back in from the north check North for about a mile and a halfing with you now get your shootout okay we got one up [Music] although these crew members did get out this could have been the last few seconds in the lives of an F4 crew moments before they were faced with a most critical decision when to eject from their outof control aircraft a delay in making this decision for whatever reason may well have cost them the opportunity to make a successful escape and added two more statistics to the ever growing number of Air Force aircraft fatalities fatalities that shouldn't but continue to happen since the first aircraft ejection in August 1949 there have been 4,600 air crewmen who have punched out of these 82% were successful yet if we concentrate on the ejection survival rate for the last 5 years we see a less optimistic picture here the survival rate average drops to 75% acent analysis reveals that the majority of these fatalities were not due to mechanical problems failure of the egress system or improper parachute Landing technique rather they were the direct result of delayed ejection the Air Force inspection and Safety Center is well aware of this problem during the past several years we at the Air Force inspection and Safety Center have noted a gradual but steady increase in our ejection fatalities this has been in spite of the fact that we're making constant improvements to our systems single motion initiation rocket catapults automatic opening lap belts ballistic powered iner reels seat man separators seat stabilization devices Force deployed parachutes and automatically deployed survival kits are just some of the improvements which were designed designed to facilitate crew members Escape some of our newer aircrafts such as the A10 the F-15 and the F-16 are equipped with a new ases 2 ejection seats that even surpass our other highly refined Escape systems there's some evidence it tends to suggest that many air crew members interpret Escape system improvements as being additional time to over come an emergency this of course is not why Escape systems are improved they are improved to give crew members a better chance to escape yet in spite of the many safety improvements Escape technology is still having a hard time keeping Pace with the demands placed upon it by improved aircraft performance more complex missions and more low-level flying now required in the current training environment there must be time for the ejection sequence to fully operate prior to ground impact therefore delaying the decision to leave the out-of-control aircraft is and has been the single most critical factor in determining the success or failure of inflight escape this is borne out by the high fatality rate in Escape attempts outside the performance envelope of the system at low altitudes particularly below 500 ft no matter how good the Escape system you've got to give it time to work as flight surgeon at the Safety Center I reviewed many accident reports involving the delayed ejection and he always Illustrated at least two points one these seats require a finite amount of time to work for example depending upon the air speed the rear seat out of the F4 requires four or five seconds from initiation to full parachute and the front seat takes a second longer and second these systems were not designed to overcome the horrendous sink rates generated by aircraft out of control which may exceed 600 ft per second there's a good reason for those mandatory bailout altitudes you just don't have much time not long ago ne4 crew was defending during a similar air combat tax engagement and while pressing to defeat his attacker the young pilot departed his aircraft at roughly 8 to 9,000 ft AGL above an overcast now he had a reputation as being an aggressive up and cominging good stick and he tried hard to salvage his mistake but apparently he got a secondary stall to avoid going in the overcast and in they went while while passing through the overcast perhaps they became disoriented we'll never know for sure but one thing for certain is that both he and his Wizzle lost awareness for how fast that aircraft was really coming down we have indications that that aircraft dropped the 8 or 9,000 ft in less than 16 seconds and possibly as little as 11 seconds for an average sink rate of between 500 and 700 feet per second when it passed through 4,000 ft AGL still unrecovered it was going to crash and was fuel to stay with it but when the aircraft broke through the bottom of that 1500t overcast with them still aboard they were both dead men the wizo did initiate a dual sequenced injection at something around a th000 AGL but barely achieved man seat separation when he hit the ground amazingly though the Imp pack broke his thigh that's not what killed him he burned to death in the fireball making the ejection decision in Wartime environment does not seem to be a problem we know from our experience in Southeast Asia that there was little reluctance for crew members to go out of a battle damaged aircraft their decisions were made quickly almost automatically without hesitation as a result there was a 95% survival rate yet in peace time the decision to eject from a disabled aircraft is not always an easy one to make in-depth analysis of aircraft accidents reveals that a number of psychological factors may be deeply involved in the decision one expert with insight into this very complex problem is Mr Rudy Delgado eess system safety manager at the Air Force inspection and Safety Center this are some of the other recorded reasons for delaying the ejection decision besides this we think there's other things such as stigma ego involvement peer pressure and command emphasis that tend to argue against the timely Escape decision however in my opinion the single most important element in the lady ejection is lack of situation awareness that is the pilot becoming so engrossed in trying to overcome his problem that he loses awareness of the overall situation such as altitude above the ground the recovery envelope of the aircraft or the safe Escape envelope this usually results in a late ejection attempt or no ejection attempt at all situation awareness played an important role in a number of recent successful ejections one over the Nevada desert in late 1980 started out as a routine f4g training exercise I'm Lieutenant Colonel Roger a stationed at George Air Force Base fly the f4g weasel on the 17th of December we were up at uh tonopa electronic warfare range as I completed a strike shot on uh one of the emitters up there got a blink of Master caution light started to climb out and the entire caution panel had failed as I checked the utility hydraulic pressure it was down to zero all other engine instruments uh read uh normally climbed up leveled off about 13,000 ft and 350 knots by this time had lost pc1 PC2 and utility the aircraft started an uncommanded roll to the left this time made a radio call that we were ejecting and uh followed that by ordering the EVO to eject at that time watched him go through the mirror and as soon as he cleared the aircraft uh about 45 de of bank I initiated ejection took until we were approximately uh about 130° of Bank maybe 40° nose Low by the time my ejection seat fired while the entire process took about 45 seconds from the first blink of a master caution light to ejection the decision to eject probably was made back in Pilot training the aircraft was uncontrollable I had uh no flight controls and no hope for uh recovery of the aircraft if I had it to do over again uh while I assumed a good position overall for ejection I did not let go of the stick and uh did not uh pull a handle with both hands and subsequently my uh right shoulder was broken during the ejection process while a t-38 flight crew was practicing Landing procedures at a Midwestern base the pilot her instructor experienced a right engine failure I'm Lieutenant Julie the as a student pilot I was recently involved in an emergency in a t38 aircraft at my home base we came back from a routine sorting to do a heavyweight no flap touch and go and as we were climbing out we got a fire in the right engine we shut the engine down but the fire burned through the control cables that led to the stabilator and we had no pitch control about that time my instructor said it was time to get out of the aircraft I said okay looked down and pulled my hand grips up and waited to hear him go behind me heard the boom I squeezed my triggers and uh that was the end of it it was not nearly as scary as I'd always thought it would be I'd been really bad in Aerospace physiology training I just hated parachute Landing Falls and I was terrified of ever having to eject I thought I'd never have to do it but when it came time to do it my instructor pulled me through if I'd been solo I think I would have thought about it a lot longer but my instructor was so calm about it that it didn't leave me any second thoughts I just squeeze the triggers and went and it didn't hurt everything worked just like it was supposed to I know if I was ever in a situation like that again I wouldn't hesitate for a second to pull the triggers because it works like it's supposed to and it doesn't hurt over the California desert an A10 was test firing ammunition with a new flash suppressor Lieutenant Colonel Rusty giddy was piloting the aircraft and can relate what happened about 3 years ago I was involved in a flight test mission out of Edwards Air Force Base in an A10 uh during which some problems developed which caused me to have to to bail out uh the problem was a double engine compressor stall which led to a double engine over temperature and then I shut both engines down attempted to cool them down so that I could then restart them however ran out of altitude before having completed that that full sequence so I had to be out I've always thought that it's sometimes difficult sometimes easy to make an injection decision uh the easy ones are when your wing gets shot off or your engine blows up or flight controls lock up that's pretty self-evident that it's time to to leave the aircraft uh there's other other times when when the pilot hopes he can salvage the situation or he hopes things are going to get a little bit better but by waiting that extra moment it's uh certainly possible that you're going to put yourself out of the ejection envelope uh in my case there was some question in my mind as I descended through what appeared to me to be 2,000 ft um because I had actually seen one of the engines light off and begin its start cycle uh however I've never regretted the decision to bail out when I did because I'm still not sure that it would have lit off and that it would have provided the amount of thrust I would have needed to recover the airplane as far as the ride in the parachute it was a little bit violent at first it takes about 2 seconds from the time you pull the handle until you're in the shoot uh then it was very quiet and once my senses caught up with what was happening to me it felt very comfortable I'd been there before numerous times during the training and um the rest of the ride down was was very comfortable while conducting high angle of attack tests on an F-111 another pilot was faced with an ejection decision I'm Colonel Pete wers we were conducting high angle of attack testing on the F-111 on this particular day we were conducting accelerated stalls at 35,000 ft to check the departure characteristics of the airplane we had already conducted one test in which the airplane did depart as predicted and a rolling departure and then recovered rather rapidly we decided to go to our second point the second point was an accelerated stall 2 GS the airplane departed as predicted but then went immediately into a spin I applied the covery control and the airplane started to recovery we thought we were going to make it but it was we were coming down very rapidly and passed through our spin shoot altitude of 22,000 ft I deployed the spin shoot as briefed and the spin shoot came off in the maneuver now things weren't going as predicted both engines were stagnated as we passed through our ejection altitude and my Chase pilot yelled for me to eject which I did after very little thought I don't believe that up to that point I'd even thought about ejecting because the airplane was highly instrumented we went back after the accident to determine how much time we had we calculated 3 seconds we' waited another 3 seconds the shoot would not have opened prior to hitting the ground I don't know that I would have made that ejection decision in those 3 seconds if my Chase pilot had not assisted me and yelled for me to eject I was highly trained and prepared for my mission I was prepared for the departure I was not prepared for my the violent recovery maneuver and the spin shoot coming off I don't know that if I departed in an operational world if I could have made that decision to eject it's important to know when it is that you want to eject and then abide by that decision while you're in the in the air even the crews of our newest aircraft models the F-15 and F-16 have experienced unexpected ejection situations the idea of ejecting never occurred to one F-16 pilot until he saw how close he was to the ground I'm major Paul Rosetti we were flying at low altitude on an F-16 operational test mission when I looked over my shoulder and saw an aggressor aircraft attacking my elet we made a defensive turn after that I made a wing Rock shortly following the ring walk my airplane pitched up violently and went into a Falling Leaf maneuver I was surprised I immediately focused all my attention on trying to fly the airplane back under control after three or four oscillations the nose pitched down then it pitched back up again at that point I checked my altimeter and was reading close to Target elevation I then looked out the window got a close-up on a cactus and theci it was time to eject the ejection occurred about 700 ft AGL about 5 seconds after going out of control the aircraft was in a very high sink rate at that time it impacted the ground about 4 seconds after I ejected and the 4500 lb of fuel on board made a fairly sizable Fireball I was forced to make a four-line jettison and steer my shoot to miss the fireball if I had waited another two or 3 seconds if I had not had any prior parachute knowledge or if I had a less capable seat I would not have cleared the fireball four thoughts on my objection firstly when the aircraft pitched out of control I did not even consider the option of ejecting even though I knew I was at very low altitude secondly I did not realize that the aircraft was not going to make it until the nose PCH down back up again and I looked out at the ground once I had made up my mind the aircraft was not going to make it and I had written off the aircraft only then did I turn to the question of survival and finally things happen a lot quicker than you think you're going to you don't have as much time as you think during a strike exercise involving multiple aircraft an F-15 a was involved in a midair Collision I'm captain Bob debos I'm an F-15 pilot stationed at halan Air Force Base in New Mexico on October the 3rd 1979 I was commander of a composite Force training mission tached to close escort F4 fighter bombers into and out of the Fall Naval Air Station range complex in Nevada as I unloaded and rolled away from my last kill I instinctly rolled to my right and what I saw rared my whole today another F-15 on an imminent illusion [Music] for the midair Collision severed the nose of my F-15 disintegrated the canopy and windscreen and instantly Blinded Me I immediately reached for the ejection handles and ejected myself in the Asus 2C at approximately 350 knots indicated air speed and 20,000 ft MSL the ejection sequence was both violent and instantaneous very comparable to being fired out of the end of a shotgun the most important thing about the ejection sequence was that I was alive and the reason that I was alive was because I made the decision to eject and then I executed that decision without any hesitation I might add that I did not make the decision to eject on October the 3rd 1979 this was a wellth out process over many years of flying that is My Philosophy had always been if I got myself into a situation where I could not determine the attitude or the capability of my aircraft than I would eject regardless of who was to blame my message is simple and straightforward if there is any doubt about the status of your aircraft leave it we can always rebuild the aircraft but we cannot rebuild the pilots there you have several ejection experiences from fellow crew members who like you fly some of the present Air Force inventory speed in today's aircraft has double and quadruple from that possible an older mod SP a few years ago these higher speeds mean a reduction in the time a pilot has to perceive to interpret and to appropriately react we no longer have the luxury of time to deliberate for a decision you today's air Crews must be able to meet the challenges presented by the aircraft that you fly the time to think about what you will do if an out ofc control situation occurs is on the ground up there the solution must be automatic if ejection is warranted then it too must be without [Music] hesitation we all knew guys who didn't all too often the accident report reads Pilots selected the wrong course of action by attempting to recover the aircraft from an out-of-control situation one that was impossible to recover wasting those few precious seconds can not only be critical in the ejection World it can be fatal don't let it be said that you ejected a second too late