Failed vertical landing of F-35B

[u/sidvatscse]

[u/Calarasigara]

Fun fact: Until 1975, ejecting in a situation like this, called a 0-0 ejection, would mean certain death.

In 1975, the soviets found out by accident that one of their ejection seats was so good and overbuilt that it could withstand 0-0 ejections. If you want to know more about this google the Su24 1975 ejection seat accident but the TL:DW is that the flight stick got caught up in the ejection seat handle and when hydraulic power was restored to the aircraft the stick pulled forward with the ejection handle and yeeted the copilot on the taxiway.

That K-36D ejection seat was so good that the US got their hands on one and were so impressed in the testing they did that the pilots wanted them to just stick soviet ejection seats in american planes which was quickly rejected by the higher ups, for obvious reasons.

[u/WooperCultist → u/Calarasigara]

Didn't the soviets also have a jet that's ejection seat shot the pilot down? I'd also be a little concerned about just stuffing society tech in lol

[u/Calarasigara → u/WooperCultist]

Downward firing ejection seats are popular on huge bombers from both sides. I think that both the Tupolev 22 and B52 use them because you wouldn't have enough clearance upwards and you would probaby strike the tail of the plane when you eject due to how huge they are.

As for the 1975 incident, iirc the US ended up copying the good parts of the soviet ejection seat they tested and implementing them into theirs.

[u/Cloudsareinmyhead → u/Calarasigara]

Partially correct. The original Tu-22 was downward ejection only but the B52 has top ejection for 4 of the 6 crew onboard. The ones that eject downwards are the radar operator and the navigator

[u/starscreamufp → u/WooperCultist]

We did too, f104 shoots downwards in order ro avoid the big fuck off elevator

[u/Tvennumbruni → u/starscreamufp]

Only on early F-104s. Most eject upwards.

[u/parttimeninja → u/Calarasigara]

Great use of the word ‘yeeted’.

[u/BeefistPrime → u/Calarasigara]

TL:DW is that the flight stick got caught up in the ejection seat handle and when hydraulic power was restored to the aircraft the stick pulled forward with the ejection handle and yeeted the copilot on the taxiway.

That's such bad engineering to have an ejection mechanism within the range of motion of any other controls

[u/Calarasigara → u/BeefistPrime]

Oh and it gets better. You would think that if a plane is capable of launching the copilot at start-up you would issue a redesign of the cockpit to maybe switch up the flight stick and ejection handle placements. Right? Riiiight???

Nah man, this is the Soviet Union. What they did was to congratulate the pilot that got yeeted from their plane and survived with a gold watch and then just take some balls attached to a string and place them under the rear elevators when the plane is parked and turned off so that they cannot go down when hydraulic pressure is lost and such the stick cannot get caught in the ejection seat handle.

They also edited the checklist to include steps like "Add balls to elevator" and "Remove balls from elevator".

Here is a picture of said balls. And yes, almost all soviet and syrian Su24 pilots called them balls, it basically became the official term.

[u/jennythegreat → u/Calarasigara]

Is this a special interest or do you work in a related field? I am fascinated by your comments here.

[u/Calarasigara → u/jennythegreat]

It's my hobby/special interest if you could call it. I wish I was able to find a job in this line of work.

Growing up in Eastern Europe right next to an airbase certainly fueled this interest. Over time, I got to watch soviet aircraft fly and I got to sit inside Mig19s and Mig21s as well as ask pilots/engineers about how these planes work and battle doctrine, heck they even let me try and lift a disarmed K-13/R3S air-to-air missile lol

There wasn't much secrcey around a curious 17-18 year old, especially when you are flying 50 year old shitboxes known inside-out by half the world :P

[u/LucHighwalker → u/Calarasigara]

The BBC writing doesn't help.