"The End (but not of the pilot)"... that cracks me up! 😄 😄! But seriously, thank you Martin-Baker, for a piece of technology that saves a lot of lives, and for inspiring one of the coolest rides in an amusement park around the world.
Just the other day your seats saved the lives of two U.S. Navy pilots who had to eject from their T-45. On the same day, two saved from a Hawk T.1. One of the ejections from the T-45 was at a very low altitude. The jet was on one side of a road....the seat was on the other side of the road. Great work, M-B....
I worked for the competition for several years, McDonnell-Douglas Escape Systems. My boss was a former M-B engineer. There was a rivalry, of course, but both of our companies, as well as a few others at at the time, kept our eyes firmly on the task of providing the safest possible means of aircrew escape. Though ours and several other companies contributed to the development and advancement of the technology, in the West at least, M-B led the way. Thanks for sharing these films of your early days.
@@theoonyoutube Not so unfortunately, although MB supply 70% of the worlds Airforces Requirements, Collins Aerospace have just been awarded the contract to supply most USAF aircraft with the ACES 5 Seat, also Russia and China make their own seats too (Some may say that the Chinese Seats are very familiar to a well known UK design 😜) .
An escape system that has saved the lives of thousands of military aircrew WORLDWIDE. How the hell, can anyone give this a 'thumbsdown'! "Martin Baker".... I salute you! 👍🏻
"How the hell, can anyone give this a 'thumbsdown'!" and how you can thumbsup movie where they failing to mention who invented this escape system? "The modern layout for an ejection seat was first proposed by Romanian inventor Anastase Dragomir in the late 1920s. The design featured a parachuted cell (a dischargeable chair from an aircraft or other vehicle). It was successfully tested on 25 August 1929 at the Paris-Orly Airport near Paris and in October 1929 at Băneasa, near Bucharest. Dragomir patented his "catapult-able cockpit" at the French Patent Office" oh he was not a british... now i get it...
@@Bialy_1 One can propose any idea, and the catapult system wasn't a great idea. I think the Germans first used ejection seats, but they were very primitive. It was the British who were instrumental in developing safe, effective and reliable ejection systems in the post-war era. They are still word leaders.
The blind was a genius solution: protecting the face; restraining the head AND firing the charge. Others might have messed about with toggles and buttons to fire the seat, really difficult in an emergency. The blind meant you had to have your face protected and head restrained before anything else could happen.
"those brave pioneers that tried out early ejection seats! " like for example this Romanian guy Anastase Dragomir that tested and patented it in France in year 1929?
The Martin-baker companies two test "pilots" were Benny Lynch and then WTH (Doddy) Hay. There is an excellent (though dated) book about Doddy Hay called "The Man in the Hot seat" which covers the transition from "gun" seats to Rocket seats nicely... The first Rocket seat test was not only zero/zero (no airspeed, no altitude) but also...No aircraft! He launched up a set of guide rails. Yep.. great big balls!
There is an interesting piece of film of an unassisted escape test from one of the V-Bombers.... out of a hatch just forward of the nose gear ... As an old skydiver I can tell you that looked just as scary... the speed the aircraft was going must have made a clean exit very difficult... he very nearly "counted rivets" along the bottom of the aircraft. (The story of the V bombers escape systems..or lack thereof, is a pretty awful one...the two pilots had ejection seats...the three crewmen down below did not. James Martin proved that seats could be fitted for those crewmen...but the project to fit them was cancelled apparently on cost grounds. )
@JZ's Best Friend I recommend you read "Doddy" Hay's book "The Man In The Hot Seat". He was the first person to test the Martin & Baker ejection-seat at zero speed/ zero altitude.
Year later, amusement parks now has a super-sized version of that test rig for lots of people to feel what these Martin-Baker employees felt like. Thanks Martin-Baker, for saving lots of fighter pilots, and inspiring one hell of an amusement park ride!
When I worked on Lightnings the bang seat velocity was up to 80 ft/s & the parachute was in a horse shoe shape @ the pilot's back & he sat on his P.S.P./ Personal Survival Pack which compressed less than a parachute thus doing less damage to the spine. Every time you used a "bang seat" it shortened your spine by 1/2". Three ejections & you were off fast jets !
We had a display seat rigged on a flat trolley so we could take it to displays ( raf wattisham) it had a very small air bottle rigged to it so you could strap a air cadet in ,etc,, and let them try .i believe the bottle had about 18/20 psi in it which was just enough to raise the seat 12ins or so when the handle was pulled ...great fun.
As an aircraft modeller, that Meteor Mark 7.5 was hard to build, unless you had a number of kits to work from. But that's how it was back then; sometimes, it was necessary to 'cut-and-shut' two planes to make a certain Mark, such as with many airliner kits.
Fun fact: the SAAB J21 was the first plane in serial production with an ejection seat as standard (due to its pusher configuration). That seat was built by Bofors.
My father worked for Martin Baker as a toolmaker at the beginning of the war. They had a prototype fighter that out performed the Spitfire but they couldn’t go into immediate production so they didn’t get the contract and instead went into producing parts for other aircraft inproduction.
@@dugclrk Martin Baker MB5, as it ultimately became was a serious hot-rod; big and with a serious engine. Eclipsed by the arrival of jet aircraft. Looked like a P-51 Mustang on steroids. See here: www.destinationsjourney.com/historical-military-photographs/martin-baker-mb5/
And the Martin Aircraft companys test pilot was Valentine Baker. He died trying to save the MB-5 prototype after an engine failure ...Martin changed the name of the company as a tribute to him.
This video shows none of the difficulties he encountered and the injuries he suffered! As I recall his tests were with the first rocket powered seats for faster aircraft than are dealt with here.
He must have had serious back problems later in life. The early ejection seats didn't have solid rocket boosters to propel the seat, they only had cordite charges which were basically enlarge shotgun shells. The acceleration was much more abrupt and damaging to the spine compared to the zero-zero seats we have today.
The old gunpowder bomb seats. A single high impulse explosion got you out of the jet and damaged a lot of spines. That was one big reason to go to a rocket seat. Stretched the ejection out just long enough that it reduced compression spinal fractures.
Before rocket packs were introduced, a three cartridge system was installed. Upon pulling the firing handle, this directly initiated what was known as the primary cartridge which was located in the top of the ejection gun. The ejection gun comprises of two telescopic tubes within a third outer tube. The outer tube is bolted directly to the cockpit floor and bulkhead. And when an ejection is initiated it will stay with the stricken aircraft. When the primary cartridge fires it fills the gun with hot pressurised gas which expands and causes the two inner tubes and therefore the seat to rise. The outer gun has two housings each containing a secondary cartridge, when the action of the inner tubes rising exposes the first of the secondary cartridges, the hot pressurised gas ruptures a disc on that cartridge and fire's the explosive contained within. This boost's the impetus, and when it's risen enough to expose the second secondary cartridge that adds even more, but effectively 'modulating' the speed of the ejection to be as kind as possible to the pilot's spine. The introduction of the rocket pack retained the three cartridge system, but the pack was fired by means of a cable fastened to a static point. When the seat was fired it rose up the guide rails until the static line reached the end of it's travel thus firing the rocket pack, which boosted the pilot well clear of the aircraft.
Every early ejection seat (except the ones tested in Britain in the late 1920s with springs and an arm to throw the seat away from the plane) had a small explosive driving the gun. The German WWII seats apparently used an explosive similar to a 20mm cannon shell, and could throw a seat and occupant (usually a dummy) out and over the tail of a Junkers Ju87 Stuka with that (old films of these tests are findable on youtube). Later telescoping tube guns used a number of small explosions to drive the seat with less G over more time (the ones I saw in the 1970s and 1980s hade five of these), and the tilting rocket pack had pairs of rockets that fired in sequence to gain the greatest separation from the aircraft with the least G over enough time to avoid most injuries. It's still not a good idea to eject more than about two times, even with careful medical checks.
I was a Martin-Baker Ejection Seat Specialists at the German Air Force.I was from 1961 -1964 at the Fighter Sqadron 72(Jagdgeschwader 72) in Leck.I Hope,them Peaples remember me .Thanks and best Greetings from Corporal Krueger.
I am proud to have worked at Martin Baker in 1995. It was an interesting company to work for and the employees, many of which were ex military had many interesting stories to tell. The test rig was right behind my office. The sound of the rockets firing made me jump every time.
One more item is for multi seat aircraft (F/A-18, F-14, F4 and dual front-back layout.....the design of the rocket motor nozzles sends one crew member out and the other the opposite direction to avoid hitting each other.
@@petesheppard1709 correct....keeps him from being burned. The pilot before flight can flip a switch that allows the backseater to initiate only his seat, but no matter what,....when the pilot pulls the handle everyone's going.......quickly.
Having fitted many ejection seats during my RAF career. I was at the Lowestoft air show when the Harrier pilot had to eject and was still surprised at how quick things happened ..
Think of Helmut Schenk, had to eject from prototype HE280, while being towed by two Bf 110s, to test an experimental pulse jet engine, while snowing ,in an untested experimental ejection seat. Bernard Lynch did have the advantage of a magnificent 'tache.
He also was the first to test a Zero Zero seat by activating it while sitting on the ground. There was a book about him and the seats and damned interesting it was. He deserved a knighthood for services to saving military lives. Guess they are all reserved for pollies and millionaires.
The old Matwing hanger at NAS Oceana had painting of a cartoon vulture riding a Martin Baker. Caption read "When all else fails, fly Martin Baker". Always a treat trying to pin the things in the middle of the night with a dark blue lens in your craptastic flashlight.
I was a firefighter in the United States Air Force. Part of our job was to know egress procedures for the F-4 Phantom, which utilized the Martin-Baker ejection seat. We had a saying, which I'm sure is widely known in a lot of circles. That saying was... "Meet your maker in a Martin-Baker!" This was due to the procedures you had to follow to safe the system. Miss one step, forget one thing and you could initiate the ejection process. If you were in the cockpit in any way, and the ejection system activated, you were going for a ride with the seat! And you were not going to fare well in that journey. Part of our training involved actually securing the ejection seat in a live scenario. Scary stuff!
If I remember correctly Lynch wasn't even an employee of Martin-Baker. He was a batsman for one of the pilots that flew but he really love the ejection so he kept on being the test dummy for a long time and many times.
The question is: how much bigger did they have to make the drogue chute to compensate for Lynches massive brass balls? Thank god for the engineers and test pilots
Amazing! Just priceless video on how Martin Baker made it!!,just for notice but anyone could see the serial number of the spitfire that is show in the first seconds of the video??
I read they still have one of those torture chamber style test rigs on the go at a facility in Northern Ireland. People would pay to have a go on that... after signing a waiver in case they get crushed vertebrae.
Have you ever seen a movie pilot who uses the ejection seat to parachute himself out from a falling airplane? We are sure you know what we are talking about. The parachuted chair was a previous design of what we call today’s ejector seat. Anastase Dragomir was the one who invented the famous “catapultable cockpit”. All his life, Anastase Dragomir worked in France in different aircraft factories. This was the time when he managed to create a system responsible for saving the passenger’s lives in case of unexpected accidents. In 1929, they tested their invention on an airport from Paris, following another one in Romania. Both of his tests were successful.
A lot of aircraft also have a slight protrusion off the top of the head rest which is also where the main parachute is stored. If for some reason the canopy doesn’t jettison the crew member can literally push the seat and shatter the canopy for a safe ejection.
In the early 90's a friend and I built a 1/4 scale of the MB5 and Martin Baker was great about providing some details. It is a shame it never saw service before WWII ended in the ETO. Two of the design features to accommodate battle damage were the landing gear mechanism and the way many of the skins were attached by twist type fittings and easily replaced. The landing gear were "default down" and brought up by a large cylinder mounted on an angle behind the cockpit. The engine was coupled to a geared case that permitted two counter-rotating propellers that improved the performance. We used a glow engine on our model with a single 4-blade prop because the cost of a custom gearbox was just too expensive.
Some of the buildings shown as being at Farnborough are still there today, most of the Airfield has changed beyond belief but some of the most historical ones have been retained. Went to an former eastern block airfield back when the wall had first come down, they were still using a tower/seat test rig for pilot training, they even showed us how it worked, and wondered why we didn’t want to try it out!!!!?????!!!! The Martin baker seats were later fitted with both a face blind and a seat pan handle, just in case G forces were at a to high +/- level that prevented use of either of the black and yellows fitted.
That was only ONE reason. Those early Parachutes (The German Henicke (sp?) and the British Guardian Angel type) were heavy and relatively bulky. More importantly noone had developed a freefall rig...so those early ones relied on static lines. Any attempt to exit a spinning or out of control aircraft would have had little chance of a clean deployment.
Even with modern technology the concept and procedures for a safe ejection haven’t changed much. Head up straight, feet against the bottom of seat and flat on the floor. Pull handle and away you go. I can’t speak for older models but some and probably most have a garter that anchors to the cockpit floor. The other part is attached to the lower legs of the pilot. Basically a high tech blood pressure cuff that fits against the calf and is velcroed to adjust for different size pilots and aircraft. The concept is anchor to the deck, attach the leg restraints to the strap. When you eject the leg restraints pull your feet against the forward bottom edge of the seat. This action forces the feet and legs to the seat to eliminate the knees and lower legs hitting the dashboard on the way up.
One detail: the seat does not go immediately. There is a delay of couple of seconds to allow for the canopy to go and to avoid collision with it. Modern seats can actually go through the canopy which is then "fragilized" by pyrotechnic devices.
The latest MB Seats have pilot retention all built in so that the harness pulls the pilot into the seat first and head, arm and leg restraints all activate before the seat leaves the cockpit, activation to parachute deployment is under 2 seconds now, my brother works for MB developing these systems.
I had to check loads of seats doing ¬before flights ¬ on Phantoms (54 sdn} and lightings {111 sgn ) many times upside down in the cockpit .......those were the days ..
I recommend to those interested in the story of Martin-Baker ejection seats to read the book, 'Man in the hot seat', by Doddy Hay. He was a flight surgeon who tested the seats using himself as the 'pilot', with some startling results at times, a very very courageous individual..
I read that book many years ago. As I recall he was testing rocket powered seats in the 1950s, perhaps for zero-zero ejections. He was insanely brave - or perhaps just insane! - and in fact was injured and hospitalised when his stomach muscles were ruptured through the rocket being way too powerful at first.
LOL He wasn't a flight surgeon. He was a (retired) RAF Physical Training Officer (who had been an Air Gunner in WW2) . As an RAF PTO he was involved in military parachute training (still run by the RAF in the UK) and had competed for Britain in one of the very early (possibly the first) World Parachuting Championships...
I seem to recall that those completing a successful ejection were awarded membership of "The Caterpillar Club". I was called that in honour of the silkworms that made the silk fibres used in the parachutes.
as my sister lived in Farnborough i went to many of the air shows , I remember one where you could be fired up in an ejector seat , they used a static vertical ramp with I assume compressed air , like being fired out of a large air gun ....those men had guts to test it with rockets, wooooo!
Read "The Man in The Hot Seat" by - William 'Doddy' Hay, who was an experimental "pilot" for Martin-Baker as they first developed the ejection seat. His story of the early days of live experimentation, before rockets were used is very interesting. He was quite severely injured several times as a result of extreme G-forces on ejection, before they figured out how to make it all work with a degree of safety!
Funy how no British here is eager to tell the story of Romanian inventor that tested this system in 1929 in Paris and got French patent for that invention in 1930...
I do not believe MB claims to have conceived the idea, only to have developed it for practical use. If the Romanian had done that then I guess there would be videos about him on YT!
In these early experiments, It looks like the seat fell a couple of thousand feet before the human's main chute finally opened, so a safe ejection couldn't happen unless the plane were higher than that. It wasn't many years before further development allowed "zero-zero" ejection, zero altitude and zero airspeed.
