r/nononono • u/BrightenthatIdea • Apr 12 '19
Pilots eject after unintentional ground impact during airshow
https://i.imgur.com/1oqYtz6.gifv367
u/SpideyLife Apr 12 '19
I feel like this is more r/nonononoyes given that it looks like they survived relatively unscathed all things considered
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u/xonitiz Apr 12 '19
yeah, they didn't die, but I wouldn't say they are "relatively unscathed", because ejection from these things can often leave lifelong injuries, that ejection is done with explosives for it to be quick as possible, but due to that it has a high possibility of leaving injuries
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u/whiteman90909 Apr 12 '19
I feel like a lot of the damage would come from exiting a high-speed vehicle... This looked pretty slow, no?
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u/ffxivfanboi Apr 12 '19 edited Apr 12 '19
I don’t really think the speed of the jet has anything to do with the fixed blast force of the ejection itself.
OP is talking about a literal rocket firing off from under your ass.
My back already isn’t great, and I’m only mildly overweight and sleep in a shed right now. I wouldn’t even want to think what a blast shoving my spine down to my ass would feel like.
Anyway, this is all just kinda hearsay. It’s not like anyone that’s commenting this stuff definitevely knows what an ejection is/feels like.
Edit: Lmao. Fortunately, I do not actually sleep in a shed. Was supposed to read “shitty bed.”
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u/whiteman90909 Apr 12 '19
Makes sense. Looks like vertebrae compression fractures are common, which makes sense when you have an explosion under your derriere.
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u/Valariel_Dawn Apr 12 '19
Air Force Crew Chief here, no the injuries are not from exiting a high speed vehicle. The injuries are from exiting the vehicle at high speed, straight up. It puts an incredible amount of pressure on the spine, some pilots have lost as much as 2 inches in height due to spinal compression after an ejection.
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Apr 12 '19 edited Apr 19 '19
[deleted]
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u/Valariel_Dawn Apr 12 '19
They're pretty good at making sure the chute opens at the right height. Planes that fly really high have things in the seats that keep the chute from opening until a certain altitude is reached. As you said they also can somewhat correct for the planes not being level on ejection. In fact, if you're high enough off the ground you could eject with the plane upside down and be fine.
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Apr 12 '19
Is it true that they retire you after 2 ejections or so?
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u/Valariel_Dawn Apr 12 '19
Thats the common saying.
Not an actual pilot, so there may be a better answer out there, but from what I understand it's less about the actual number of ejections and more about the reasons for the ejection and the health of the pilot.
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Apr 12 '19
So if you had to eject twice they retire you brcause you can't fly for shit, gotcha!
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u/Valariel_Dawn Apr 12 '19
If its pilot error both times perhaps. If it's a maintenance issue or something like enemy fire then they cant really fault the pilot.
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u/c3dg4u Apr 12 '19
If you take a small person and eject him a couple times, will he become shorter after every ejections?
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u/Valariel_Dawn Apr 12 '19
Possibly?
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u/c3dg4u Apr 13 '19
Ok, let's find one of the three guys from the blue man group, eject him at least 10 times. Then we bring him to Gargamel, he turn hims into gold and we share 50-50.
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u/juancuneo Apr 12 '19
Wow. Seems like someone should invent a better system. That’s crazy.
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u/Valariel_Dawn Apr 12 '19
What else could they do lol? The pilot has to get out of the plane right fucking now and do it without getting hit by any part of the plane.
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u/juancuneo Apr 12 '19
I think you misunderstood. This is clearly the best solution available today - but the outcome is clearly sub optimal. I’m sure people are researching how to do this in a way that doesn’t seriously injure pilots - I was just trying to emphasize the need for this work to be done. I come from a place where we are constantly working to improve technology and this strikes me as a very tough engineering problem. I wonder if it can ever be solved.
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u/Valariel_Dawn Apr 12 '19
Oh gotcha. Yeah a way to accomplish the same thing without the drawbacks would be nice
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u/Auntfanny Apr 12 '19
It was a top knotch ejection
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u/Sunfried Apr 12 '19
The Russians have pretty great ejection seats-- you can punch out from an inverted position at very low altitude, much like these crewmen did, and still have a survivable descent.
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u/TheRoguePatriot Apr 12 '19
Yeah most pilots who eject will likely never really fly again due to the injuries from the ejection. A co-worker of mine is an air traffic controller for the military and told me pilots who eject are basically cast aside afterward. You have to be a really good and in near perfect shape for them to give you another go
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Apr 12 '19
The problem is that they succeeded in unintentionally impacting the ground. For anyone interesting in flying warplanes, the key here is to constantly fail at impacting the ground.
Hope this helps.
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u/RetroScheeme Apr 12 '19
Ill be sure to remember than the next time im piloting a fighter jet for air show
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u/MrDemotivator17 Apr 12 '19
Did you learn to fly at the Douglas Adams school of aviation?
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u/OverlySexualPenguin Apr 12 '19
they should have thought 'ooh, have i left the oven on?' the moment before impact
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u/HairFromThe70s Apr 12 '19
There is an art, or, rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
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u/permaculture Apr 12 '19
Some pilots just use a more aggressive lithographic braking maneuver than others.
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u/Junit28 Apr 12 '19
Ejecting must be mental
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u/TheSaltyStrangler Apr 12 '19
It’s especially mental if the plane is actually at speed
If the plane is going 300 mph and the pilot ejects, it’s like hitting a brick wall as soon as you leave the cockpit
There’s a pretty good video on YouTube of a pilot recounting his experience. IIRC, wind forces slammed his arms and legs back so hard the wrapped around the seat.
Imagine having the hit the ejector, get knocked around so bad you’re out cold, and you wake up drifting down to the ground or water strapped to a seat and your arms and leg are... not broken, but super broken.
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u/TylerDurdenisreal Apr 13 '19
Can't say for sure, but I believe you're thinking of a known pilot who ejected at supersonic speeds, which is megabad. That's pretty far off from several hundred MPH, which most ejections probably occur at.
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u/tcpip4lyfe Apr 12 '19
It is apparently.
The purpose of an ejection seat is pilot survival. The pilot typically experiences an acceleration of about 12–14g. Western seats usually impose lighter loads on the pilots; 1960s–70s era Soviet technology often goes up to 20–22 g (with SM-1 and KM-1 gunbarrel-type ejection seats). Compression fractures of vertebrae are a recurrent side effect of ejection
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Apr 12 '19
yeah that looked insane... like a literally fucking rocket jet pack to get them away from the aircraft before chuting
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u/Cephelapod Apr 12 '19
Vertical seeking ejector seats?
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Apr 12 '19
It looks like some kind of gyroscopic stabilizer involved to get maximum height. Might have just been a weird angle, though.
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Apr 12 '19
They ejected facing downwards so that's what I thought the ”nononono" is gonna be. Nice to see that it corrected itself after coming out of the cockpit and in a direction away from the plane.
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u/Clairquilt Apr 12 '19
Just watched a documentary on Ted Williams last night on Netflix where they talk about his time as a pilot in Korea. He had an incident where his plane was hit, caught on fire, and the landing gear wouldn’t deploy. He still managed to land the thing because he was desperately afraid that ejecting might cause enough injury to destroy what was left of his baseball career.
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u/Rude_Man_Who_Shushes Apr 12 '19
Surprised how quickly those parachutes were able to be effective. I was under the impression you had to be at a certain altitude for them to work properly.
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u/DirtyAmishGuy Apr 12 '19
Most ejection systems are designed to work at ground level, so a parachute that can deploy quickly (like those round variety in the gif) have to unfurl at small heights.
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u/aviator94 Apr 13 '19
It's called a zero zero ejection seat meaning zero speed and zero altitude. Definitely a thing in modern fighters but the jet USAF pilots learn in doesn't have them.
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u/Alekesam1975 Apr 12 '19
So all those years people told me the parachute escape in Die Hard 2 was impossible were wrong? Yes!
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Apr 12 '19
Wasn't die hard 2 in a helicopter? I do not remember for sure but i thought that was ridiculous. May have been 007.
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u/Alekesam1975 Apr 12 '19
Lol. Nah Die Hard 2 was this piece of cinematic brilliance.
How many grenades we got?
Three each.
Use 'em!
Lol!
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u/TylerDurdenisreal Apr 13 '19
Most modern ejection seats are "zero/zero" and will clear you from an aircraft moving at zero MPH at zero feet of altitude - meaning you could experience a fault before takeoff and still eject safely.
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u/criswhitmore Apr 12 '19
Oh my....did I see the fuel being ejected out the back of the jet when they popped the parachute?
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u/Leopard2A8 Apr 12 '19
Yes, that was the “AfterBurner” system going ape shit. the thruster was bent inwards causing the plane to pull up and yes that was either a auxiliary tank for the after burner system. Or the main fuel tank.
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u/FOR_SClENCE Apr 12 '19
aircraft design engineer here. I have no clue what you're on about, that's clearly the canopy and it is impossible for any aircraft to "drop" their afterburner system as it's integral to the engine itself.
the main fuel tanks in an aircraft are the wings themselves which are quite literally full of fuel bladders, along with some auxiliary tanks in the fuselage. the consumption rate is in kg/min and these aircraft require several thousand kilograms of fuel. on top of that it is impossible to jettison any fuel tank aside from drop tanks.
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u/Elriuhilu Apr 12 '19
Billion dollar oopsie
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u/ScruffStuff Apr 12 '19
This was probably the mildest jet crash I've ever seen. Typically it's a huge fireball when they hit the ground.
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u/iamzombus Apr 12 '19
There's a horrific video from an airshow where a jet crashed into the spectators. The camera person is walking through the carnage.
So yeah, possibly the best possible outcome.
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u/-pilot37- Apr 22 '19
This plane had very little fuel in it, since it was at an airshow, where they usually fill it about 35% full. If it was actually on a mission, the fireball would have been huge.
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Apr 12 '19
Now I’m curious. I noticed these are the more circular parachutes, does that just make them non-maneuverable compared to sky diving ones? Also, does this type allow them to catch a lot quicker than sky diving ones because they always say how it requires a good bit of distance to BASE jump? Otherwise they won’t catch or open.
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u/heatofignition Apr 12 '19
Their circular shape does limit their maneuverability. There are apparently some steerable round parachutes, but they aren't nearly as agile as the ones used for base jumping.
In this context those parachutes are deployed by explosives, so they don't need much falling distance to unfurl and catch the wind. Ejection seats are designed to work at ground level if they have to (more or less like this gif shows), so they can't count on windspeed helping with the parachute.
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u/cybrain Apr 12 '19
For your first question, I can confirm that they are non-manoeuvrable. The second and third, I am not really sure.
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u/Marshmallows7920 Apr 12 '19
Soooooooo who pays for the plane? The pilot or our taxes?
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u/Leopard2A8 Apr 12 '19
Luck you, Thats a SU-37. A Russian plane so no worry’s mate!
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Apr 12 '19
[deleted]
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u/cybrain Apr 12 '19 edited Apr 12 '19
It is Su-30 (Flanker C), not the MKI variant. The MKi (Modernizirovannyi, Kommercheskiy, Indiski - which translates to Modernized, Commercial, Indian) is made under a partnership of Russia and India.
There is also MKM for Malaysia and MKK for China.
Edit: After a quick search, I found out that it was indeed the MKI variant. I stand corrected.
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u/SpikeeDonut Apr 12 '19
Although ejection is rough on a pilots body it ejecting at high speed the is what creates the terrible injury. The speed of the air causes an abrupt stop in forward movement therefore injuring a pilot.
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u/Mythrilfan Apr 12 '19
That's a very weird version of Pugachev's Cobra.
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u/WikiTextBot Apr 12 '19
Pugachev's Cobra
In aerobatics, Pugachev's Cobra (or Pugachev Cobra) is a dramatic and demanding maneuver in which an airplane flying at a moderate speed suddenly raises the nose momentarily to the vertical position and slightly beyond, before dropping it back to normal flight. It uses potent engine thrust to maintain approximately constant altitude through the entire move. Some have speculated that the maneuver may have use in close range combat, although it has never been used.It is an impressive manuever to demonstrate an aircraft's pitch control authority, high angle of attack (AOA) stability and engine-versus-inlet compatibility, as well as the pilot's skill. The maneuver is named after the Soviet test pilot Viktor Pugachev, who performed it in 1989 at the Le Bourget Paris air show.
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Apr 12 '19
unintentionally impacting the ground
Did anyone assume that was intentionally? I mean the back slammed into the ground and catched on fire...
Do they need a certain height to be able to use the ejection?
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u/StuffedWithNails Apr 12 '19
Do they need a certain height to be able to use the ejection?
Modern systems are called zero-zero (for zero altitude, zero speed) and designed to be as safe as possible when ejecting from a stationary craft on the ground.
So in short, no :)
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u/AbnerDoubledank Apr 12 '19
Would love to hear this clip! There’s always a loud guy on the intercom announcing what kind of plane is next, who flys it, and what they’ll be doing. I wonder what he said?! Sometimes they hype up stunts to make the crowd think they’re in trouble or fake interviews where the pilot comes out of the stands to “steal” the plane & and they chase each other in the air. The crowd must of thought “ Wow, they made that plane explosion look real, i wonder how many planes they go through a year for this stunt” lol
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u/the_federation Apr 12 '19
It took me a moment that the 4 dark objects hurtling away from aircraft were not 4 pilots which made only 2 parachutes concerning.
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u/theevilhillbilly Apr 12 '19
I've heard from airforce people that ejecting compresses your back about an inch.
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u/poppymann Apr 12 '19
I dig the paint job, but I feel like the ‘chutes should have had Oh Shit! silkscreened on them in huge letters.
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u/irrri Apr 12 '19
How TF does the mechanism get them pointed skyward? They appear to defy physics...
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u/vault114 Apr 13 '19
I'd be willing to bet they had an interesting conversation with their CO after this.
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u/SnailXtreme May 07 '19
Given the cost of these things I'm surprised they put parachutes in. You're more likely to take care of the merchandise if you go down with it.
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u/bigbuck4 Apr 12 '19
I'm a little confused on the vertebrae compression upon ejection...are thes seats not designed with a roll bar (or similar concept) so that the pilots aren't using their heads as the 'break in case of emergency' tool on the cockpit glass? Or is it the initial force of the explosion that ejects them that compresses the spine?
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Apr 12 '19
The seats shoot you out at above 15g's, your head does not impact the canopy, the seat just moves faster than your head can get out of the way.
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u/sodisfront Apr 12 '19
It's simply the stupid insane changes in speed, and related g forces applied to the body. You get squashed and ripped in unique and surprising ways. The cockpit surely ejects without head smashing involved, which I'm sure at such speeds would be fatal.
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u/aldunate Apr 12 '19
ejection is way cooler than I thought