Jet AC ejection seats

[BWDenver]

43 minutes ago, RichB63 said:

More great documentation…thanks!

 

Sparkit make some excellent Martin Bakers. And they appear to account for Navy/Air Force differences. They even do a couple variations of the Navy Mk. H5; early and late.

https://sparkit-models.com/en/7-cockpit

A Mk. H5 that I acquired from them…
 

 

 

 

Very nice representation of an early Navy/USMC Mk.H 5seat. 

 

Bit spendy though....

Edited March 15 by BWDenver

[JeffreyK]

My Mk.H5 seats also account for the difference between Navy and AF variants. Granted, they are hand-mastered and have been on the market for about 10 years now so they may not have the super sharp details of the 3D printed seats shown, but they are also qutie a bit cheaper 🙂 and have been updated to fit the Tamiya kit.

https://www.hypersonicmodels.com/product/martin-baker-mk-h5-ejection-seats

Cheers

J

[BWDenver]

12 minutes ago, JeffreyK said:

My Mk.H5 seats also account for the difference between Navy and AF variants. Granted, they are hand-mastered and have been on the market for about 10 years now so they may not have the super sharp details of the 3D printed seats shown, but they are also qutie a bit cheaper 🙂 and have been updated to fit the Tamiya kit.

https://www.hypersonicmodels.com/product/martin-baker-mk-h5-ejection-seats

Cheers

J

At roughly 1/3 the cost up front, they are very nice representations of the mid date Mk.H5 seat with the larger back pad.

 

Should you want to update the Mk.H5 to the early version....  🙂

 

[JeffreyK]

Thanks!

And a very useful photo!

[BWDenver]

2 hours ago, JeffreyK said:

Thanks!

And a very useful photo!

Your very welcom!

[martinBK]

I allow me to show this picture : 3 Phantom seats for USNavy (left..with USAF savety flags) RAF (center) and German (right). On the ground you can see a USAF PSP.

 

As far as the JASDF (Japan) F-4 seat is concerned, I think it's usefull to say that (at least)  its PSP is paculiar to this country (seems to be a mix of USN/USAF PSP);  it also have more back pads.

Edited March 15 by martinBK
mistake

[BWDenver]

Interesting collection, especially how the harness is different between country's...

[ya-gabor]

Don’t you just hate when people show what they have!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WOW!!!!!!  Envy you very much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Best regards

Gabor

[BWDenver]

My wife has assured me if I show up with another ejection seat she will murder me in my sleep....

 

And I just have the two... One F-100A the other an F-8....

[RichB63]

1 hour ago, BWDenver said:

My wife has assured me if I show up with another ejection seat she will murder me in my sleep....

 

And I just have the two... One F-100A the other an F-8....

Wow! I hope these are featured in an upcoming article!

[BWDenver]

Another F-4S, VMFA-321.  This cockpit has something a bit more interesting, aside from the Mk.H7 seats.  The two boxes on the front canopy sill are IR trackers that track the position of the pilot's helmet, there are IR emitters on the helmets.  From what I understand it served as a targeting system.

 

not sure how many F-4S aircraft had the mod, but all the VMFA-321 birds had them.

[Ben Brown]

9 hours ago, BWDenver said:

My wife has assured me if I show up with another ejection seat she will murder me in my sleep....

 

And I just have the two... One F-100A the other an F-8....

Wait, you have an F-100A seat?? Can you post a couple of photos, please? 

 

Ben (the F-100 nut)

[ya-gabor]

Many moons ago (somewhere almost 30 years ago) I had just 3 seats in the living room against the wall. One K-36, a KM-1M and an early SK seat. They were the second row in front of the TV. : )  : )  Me girlfriend was not really happy about it but it was my flat so  . . .  They question “me or the seats” was never raised by her.   : )    : )

 

Now I have 25 +  seats, but of course they are not in the living room (only few).

 

Best regards

Gabor

[BWDenver]

11 minutes ago, ya-gabor said:

Many moons ago (somewhere almost 30 years ago) I had just 3 seats in the living room against the wall. One K-36, a KM-1M and an early SK seat. They were the second row in front of the TV. : )  : )  Me girlfriend was not really happy about it but it was my flat so  . . .  They question “me or the seats” was never raised by her.   : )    : )

 

Now I have 25 +  seats, but of course they are not in the living room (only few).

 

Best regards

Gabor

And the girl friend?

[BWDenver]

5 hours ago, Ben Brown said:

Wait, you have an F-100A seat?? Can you post a couple of photos, please? 

 

Ben (the F-100 nut)

Ops, my bad...  When I originally looked up the SN that's stenciled to the top of the seat, it was listed as and F-100A.  Turns out it's really a Fun-Hundred-C.  I actually had not really looked at in a few years.

 

At the moment its buried down in the basement.  It's just the seat frame and nothing else.  It was pulled out of a target aircraft on a range at Ft Irwin back in the mid 70's.  

1762 to MASDC Mar 8, 1974 as FE231.  To Range target at Fort Irwin, CA   Dec 1975

The only structural difference between the A seat and C seat is the head pad, and a coupled of crew airframe interconnects.  In any event here's a couple of TO illustrations of it as well as some shots I got from the AF in the '76 time frame.  I was attending a course for DUSTOFF pilots at Fort Sam Huston in San Antonio TX, and went over to Kelly AFB to talk to the seat managers.  They were kind enough to give me a batch of color and B&W photos of seats in use at the time used in the Century Series AC.

 

The first shot has been passed around, although this is a scan of the original.  I made the mistake of letting a guy named Tony Landis shoot dupes of it, and others, for me.  He worked at the DIA photo Lab at the time.  And he made multiple copies without my permission to pass around to the aviation writers he was currying favor from.  That was the last of any of my shots I let him have.  Anything he saw in the DIA lab that was not marked Classified, he copied and handed out, even if was not cleared for release.  I can imagine some of the security managers might have taken a dim view of his activities.

 

In any event here are a few shots of my 100C seat.  The bird went onto the ranges at Ft Irwin in Dec 1975.  And was purloined by a CPT friend of mine in a ground unit, and a model builder.  He wanted the seat, so he had his folks pull it.  Now remember they are sitting in the middle of a bombing range to accomplish this.  When he got back to Ft Hook he mentioned it to me, and I asked him if wanted to unload it.  He said "Whatcha got?"  At the time I had some East European models, one a Bear bomber and some helicopters.  We struck a deal, and I ended up with it.

 

"One of these days" I'm going to get it close to looking as an operational seat.  A friend of mine, Hugh Mills, would come over and immediately sit in the seat and start working the firing handles.  I always wanted to hook up an Estes rocket engine to it so it would fire the rocket when both handles were pulled...

 

The next shot is a F-100A seat combined.

 

The 100 seat I can pick up without much difficulty, the F-8 Mk.F7 seat is a different story.  I figure I'll try to unload it in the near future.  It was pulled form a target at Dahlgren in VA.  I got it with an F-89 Radar operators and F-11 seat, and unloaded them years back.  I later found out they had a Seamaster fuselage there.  Wish I could have gotten one of throes Stanley rocket seats..

.

 

[ya-gabor]

2 hours ago, BWDenver said:

And the girl friend?

She was one from a long time ago. Since then there were many others (not only ejection seats)!  : )  : )   : )

 

Here is a recent right next to my desk.

 

Best regards

Gabor

[BWDenver]

12 minutes ago, ya-gabor said:

She was one from a long time ago. Since then there were many others (not only ejection seats)!  : )  : )   : )

 

Here is a recent right next to my desk.

 

Best regards

Gabor

 

🤣🤣

[Ben Brown]

@BWDenver, 

 

Thank you! These pics are great! One of these days I'm going to do another F-100C conversion of the Monogram kit and the seat details have been the main holdup.

 

Ben 

[BWDenver]

29 minutes ago, Ben Brown said:

@BWDenver, 

 

Thank you! These pics are great! One of these days I'm going to do another F-100C conversion of the Monogram kit and the seat details have been the main holdup.

 

Ben 

The seat is fairly simple, compared to the monocoque seats of the F-100D.  the external frame should be fairly easy to build.

[Ben Brown]

Fortunately, not much of the frame will be seen once it’s installed in the cockpit.

 

Ben

[BWDenver]

F-100C, D & F seats

 

The F-100 was on the cutting edge of both speed and ejection seat technology.  The initial seat had an external frame and a seat pan in the F-100A & 100C.  The second seat installed in the F-100d and 100f was a moonquake design dispensing with the external seat frame.

 

The early seats had issues with tumbling, and to solve this Stencel developed a “snubber” line that paid out from the seat to keep the seat from tumbling and stayed connected to the aircraft until the crew seat separation.  The snubbing system kept the seat from colliding with the pilot.  F-100’s modified with T.O. 1F-100-1056 added a DART (Directional Realignment of Trajectory) system.

 

The original M-5 catapult was a triple tube that contained one explosive charge. While the -1’s indicate the seat could eject the pilot at any altitude and speed, if did not indicate he could do it safely.  As seat technology evolved the seats the altitude at which the pilot could survive at lower altitudes. With T.O. 1F-100-821 a rocket catapult was introduced.  But it did not appear to be a 0-0 capability.  Even with the rocket catapult the -1’s indicates at zero altitude the speed needed was 120 Kts.  Some pilots added extra speed up to 150 KTS.  As late as 30 April 1968 the system was not 0-0.

 

F-100D block 91 airframes added the ZELL capability and added an adjustable headrest that would provide more support to the pilot’s head.  There was a lever on the right side of the headset the pilot can flip the headset to a V for support.  The forward seat of the F-100F also has this ability, along with a foldable canopy bumper.  The illustration of the folding headrest seat is depicted in the deployed configuration.  The rear seat of the F-100F has a single piece headset.

 

The rocket catapult consisted of two tubes, the inner tube is the rocket.  And while promising apparently did not give the system 0-0 capability.  Most of the -1's I have clearly stated the seat would work at 0 altitude, only above 120 kts.

 

The F-100 seat fed into the F-107 seat, and they shared several common features.

 

Danish F-100D & f airframes had Martin Baker Mk.DB5 and DB5A seats.  It is likely it is similar on the RH side as the Mk.N5 seat of the FJ4 with regards to the emergency O2 bottle and seat adjust.  The seat cushion is different than the Mk.N5 unit. 

 

The DE5/5A seats are for the F-100D.  The DB5/DB5A are for the F-100F.  Seat pads are light and dark brown.   Harness tan, probably same colors as the German Mk.7

 

Edited March 17 by BWDenver

[Ben Brown]

@BWDenver,

 

Thanks for taking the time to post this! I love this kind of airplane geek stuff! 

 

Ben

[BillS]

Just a great discussion and wow, some great seat collections. It is worthy of noting the differing philosophies between service branches and nations. The Brits and USN were initially big in to face curtains for actuation while USAF went for leg guard triggers, man seat separators (butt snappers)  then between the leg D rings. On the MB seats, the harness European style harness was rated to 20 Gs while the US integrated design was rated to 40 Gs. Surprised there’s not a Northrop seat in the mix here.

[BWDenver]

The discussions I had with Navy and USAF seat folks brought out a number of philosophical differences. 

 

The USN folks looked at the seat as a way to get the crewman out of a doomed cockpit in as little time as possible, hence through the canopy in a lot of cases.  That, in and of itself, saved about ½ second.  But lead to (mostly minor) injuries.  USAF seat managers were opposed to that approach.  Dick Atkins of Vought told me “The Air Force would rather kill a pilot than hurt him”.  The USN use of a face curtain helped put the crewman in a better posture, so they didn’t slouch.  The advent of auto harness retract systems went a long way to correct that.  But the MB seats, preferred by the USN/USMC, offered upwards of an 18G ride.  And a lot of soar backs.  There is a shot of Randy Cunningham after he jettisoned showtime 100, and you can see the pain on his face after his ejection.

 

The USMC was faced with a significant problem in the AV-8A, some failures at a hover were a real threat, that the Martin-Baker Mk.9 seat could not handle.  They came up with the STECNEL SIIS SEU-3/A, SJU-2/A and SJU-1/A seats for AV-8A, TAV-8A’s and the Spanish AV-8A.  The 4-mode system, under worst case would have a canopy over a crewman at T+0.6 seconds after the pilot initiated the ejection.  More on that seat in the future.

 

USAF went with seat armrest triggers for the reason they offered a way to have the crewman put his arms on solid surface.  That in turn reduced the load on his spine to around 12G, and reduced back injuries.  Canopies were a problem for USAF managers as some were fairly thick.  When I shot the F-107 cockpit at Wright-Patt I was amazed at the thickness.  In the late 50’s Goodyear developed a heat resistant triple laminated canopy that would resist a .45 Cal bullet.  I remember seeing a commercial where a guy fired a Thompson Sub Machine gun at (I think) an F-100 canopy.  While USAF prohibition of thru the canopy ejections in the late 50’s and early 60’s, was not universal, it was pretty strong.

 

As to the Northrop seat, that will be covered in the future.  But it has been replaced in T-38C USAF trainer and NASA birds with the Martin-Baker US16T seat.  The last one retrofitted in 2014.  Their new Mk.17 seat weighs in at just 38 Kg/84 Lbs, and is roughly half the weight of the standard “Fast Jet” ejection seat.  The current issue is dealing with today’s Gen 3 helmets and their display systems.

[Tailspin Turtle]

"The first seat in the Phantom II was a joint seat by McDonnell/Stanely.  Although I have not found specific information what parts were made by McDonnell  and what parts were by Stanely.  The attached shots are from McDonnell.  It was installed in the first 10 airframe and was in the aircraft for a number of records."

 

Stanley, not "Stanely". Strictly speaking, the original seat wasn't in the first 10 BuNos since 145309 was completed with the Martin-Baker seat. For sure, 142660 (#2) and 145307 (#8) were retrofitted with the M-B seat. According to my notes, the others kept the original seat.