Very lucky vintage Corsair air race pilot

[Total loss]

Kevin Eldridge's bail out of the burning Super Corsair at the Phoenix 500 Air Races in 1994
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqPPCCKAFp8

now read his account of what happened
http://www.warbirdaeropress.com/articles/bail_out....

[Eric Mc]

Not quite breaking news.

[Simpo Two]

But interesting to read how difficult it was to get out and how injured he got in the process. I'm sure WW2 pilots were regularly bailing out at 250mph without such injuries.

He made great mention of how it kept rolling and how he was trying to keep it level - was not the 'undo the straps, roll onto your back and fall out' an option? Or climb to lose speed?

Easy to think of it afterwards I agree though!

[Eric Mc]

Simpo Two said:

But interesting to read how difficult it was to get out and how injured he got in the process. I'm sure WW2 pilots were regularly bailing out at 250mph without such injuries.

He made great mention of how it kept rolling and how he was trying to keep it level - was not the 'undo the straps, roll onto your back and fall out' an option? Or climb to lose speed?

Easy to think of it afterwards I agree though!

MANY WW2 aircrew were killed or injured in the baling out of their aircraft. It is one of the reasons why ejector seats were invented.

[Ginetta G15 Girl]

"was not the 'undo the straps, roll onto your back and fall out' an option? Or climb to lose speed?"

The problem he had was with the trim of the a/c. It had a fixed elevator trim tab (set on the ground) set up to suit high speed level flight. As soon as he lost speed in the climb the a/c naturally wanted to pitch down violently such that he couldn't just let go of the stick, open the canopy and drop out.

Reading between the lines, if he had adjustable trim, he didn't have enough to counter the stick forces produced by the fixed tab.

[Mojocvh]

Glad to see he made it.

[Simpo Two]

Eric Mc said:

MANY WW2 aircrew were killed or injured in the baling out of their aircraft. It is one of the reasons why ejector seats were invented.

I thought that was more for for the advent of jets, when speeds increased to the point where pilots physically couldn't get out because the slipstream pinned them in. And no doubt a heavy ejector seat would take the edge off performance when every mph and ft/min climb counted.

[Mr Will]

Ginetta G15 Girl said:

"was not the 'undo the straps, roll onto your back and fall out' an option? Or climb to lose speed?"

The problem he had was with the trim of the a/c. It had a fixed elevator trim tab (set on the ground) set up to suit high speed level flight. As soon as he lost speed in the climb the a/c naturally wanted to pitch down violently such that he couldn't just let go of the stick, open the canopy and drop out.

Reading between the lines, if he had adjustable trim, he didn't have enough to counter the stick forces produced by the fixed tab.

Surely rolling inverted would have been the best option then? The aircraft's trim would be making it climb rather than dive and the falling out becomes easier?

[Eric Mc]

Simpo Two said:

Eric Mc said:

MANY WW2 aircrew were killed or injured in the baling out of their aircraft. It is one of the reasons why ejector seats were invented.

I thought that was more for for the advent of jets, when speeds increased to the point where pilots physically couldn't get out because the slipstream pinned them in. And no doubt a heavy ejector seat would take the edge off performance when every mph and ft/min climb counted.

The first two production aircraft to be fitted with ejector seats were both piston powered - the Heinkel He219 and the Dornier Do335.

Getting out of any aircraft (piston, jet or whatever) is always difficult - especially at speeds over 200 mph.

There is some very interesting RAE footage taken of ground tests where a volunteer tried to extricate himself from a Spitfire cockpit in various speeds of airflow and you can see how difficult it increasingly gets as the airspeed increases.

[eharding]

Mr Will said:

Surely rolling inverted would have been the best option then? The aircraft's trim would be making it climb rather than dive and the falling out becomes easier?

I have no idea what inverted fuel or oil systems were fitted to a stock Corsair, but if it did originally have any I'd lay bets on it being stripped out for the racing conversion - Reno pylon racers don't need inverted systems, and even in a brute like that they'd be looking to make any weight savings they could.

Hence, once inverted he'd have lost any remaining engine power with a few seconds, and if he was struggling to gain height right up until stepping over the side, chances are opting for an inverted exit would have resulted in a net reduction in the effective abandon height. The other issue was that there was a large quantity of burning fuel emerging from the underside of the aircraft. Rolling inverted would increase the chances of bringing that burning fuel into the cockpit.

All of which is probably academic - all he knew was the engine had gone bang, and his mates were telling him he was on fire and to bale out, now - at 2.5k feet, you're probably going to break things after baling out on a manual emergency canopy, but faced with clear direction - from people you trust - about the state of the aircraft stepping over the side asap without thought for further niceties was the order of the day.

[Simpo Two]

Eric Mc said:

The first two production aircraft to be fitted with ejector seats were both piston powered - the Heinkel He219 and the Dornier Do335.

I know, but the fact that ejection seats were never really developed for piston aircraft at the time leads me to think it was not deemed a problem worthy of vast effort to solve. If pilots were consistently unable to bail out or landed in bits, then it would have been...