What Happens When Pilots Eject At Supersonic speeds? 🤔

[Aviation_insider]

More Info: after they successfully ejected from the stricken aircraft and survived the mid-air collision, the launch officer tragically did not survive because he sustained some injuries that made him unable to get into his one-man life raft on time and drowned in the Pacific Ocean.

[sixstringsimpleton]

There's footage of the separation, it doesn't seem to go up more than a meter, then seemingly floats down into the carrier plane. The footage ended there.

[Barbequeque]

Former ejection seat mechanic here. Blackbird pilots have special suits specifically made for the bird, considering it's max speed and altitude. Practically a spacesuit... Anyways i dont remember what the specific plane was... Maybe an f-111...? Has an encapsulated ejection pod to avoid the high stress to the body from ejecting at operational height.

Anyhow, the person that died from this ejection didn't die from the ejection itself. He opened his visor while in the water and drowned.

[kendalljackson]

The F15 pilot that ejected at 700 mph got messed up really bad

[markanderson]

They ended up launching the D-21s from B-52s using rocket boosters to get the speed required for the D-21s ramjet to work. Flew them over North Vietnam for photo recon.

[jerryavila]

Wrong to say there were no fatalities. The back seater survived ejection but soon later drowned.

[United_States_Of_America_gov..]

For anyone who’s wondering what a D-21 is, it was a drone developed during the Cold War to spy on the Soviets and to fly at Mach 3.3. The D stands not for drone, but for daughter and the 21 I don’t know why. It had four flights with one D-21 getting captured by the Chinese because the US was also trying to spy on them since at the time the D-21 was being tested, the Chinese had just developed and tested their first nuclear bomb. One got into the hands of the Soviets and was re-engineered by the engineers at Tupolov, but never entered service due to spy satellites. The last two crashed without ejecting a waterproof camera the drone had on it, and they crashed over the pacific. And ironically I just watched a video on the D-21 by Found and Explained, so that’s a weird coincidence.

[bagel_thunderYT]

It probably would have made the most sense for the BlackBird to have a capsule ejection like the F-111

[edwardlandry]

The pilots turn to Reed Richards from Fantastic Four 💀💀💀💀

[The_Second_greatest_ever]

The parachute has an oxygen tank on the harness that kept the suits pressurized and supplied oxygen. One pilot was ejected at 76, 000 ft and when the plane disintegrated around him. He woke up while falling to earth. The chute automatically opened at 15, 000 ft. He lived.

[Nitrex]

There is a pilot who survived ejecting at mach 1, there was an instrument failure during a night time exercise and they unknowingly plummeted down and only noticed when they broke the sound barrier and checked the altimeter, the then promptly ejected maybe 10 seconds before the aircraft impacted the ocean, the pilots limbs were all instantly broken and he had one of his elbows inverted, his copilot unfortunately had his neck broken. The pilot is alive and well to this day as far as I’m aware

[SunfishBoi]

kudos to whoever took the ejection test

[seanin]

That must have been one hell of a ride

[Rogue_Death_Angel]

I was thinking the amount of G forces would rip them apart

[BqqbQ]

It's not test, it's incident.

[tanmayvikram]

They went to test it, but got tested instead 😂

[Velereonics]

In 1966 there was a mid-air collision between some kind of SuperSonic jet and two people died pretty much instantly and one guy the ejection like the canopy didn't come off the plane and it's landed back down onto his arm

[april-wrmf]

I think its important to mention altitude is a heavy factor in this equation, the lower you are the more air resitance there is and the more your going to be torn to shreds when you suddenly hit the wind at 2 times the speed of sound alternatively if you are very high up where there is much less air resistance your chances or escaping unscathed significantly increase

[edugames]

Ejecting with a full suit is different than ejecting only with a G-suit and a helmet

[FloridaManMatty]

Funny how Kelly Johnson lampooned the parasite idea when Convair was working on it with FISH (prior to Kingfish), but thought it was BRILLIANT when he decided to give it a go 😂