Eject! Eject! Eject!

Ejection seats have been around in military aircraft for over 50 years. Like parachutes and helmets, these lifesavers are considered just another piece of flight equipment for high performance jets. It wasn't always that way.

Before ejection seats, bailing out of a burning, out of control aircraft was no mean feat. If the pilot was lucky he had some altitude and enough control to pull the canopy back, get disconnected from his radio and oxygen tank, fly inverted and pop the seat harness, and hope he fell clear of the plane.

When the jet age arrived, aircraft speeds had increased and with them the possibility of bail out successfully became more remote. The solution was the ejection seat. An automatic device to blow the pilot clear of the airframe, protect him from the wind blast, deploy his parachute and bring along his survival gear.

It wasn't so simple, of course. Early ejection seats were nothing more than explosive bolts made from artillery shells, arranged to blow the seat and pilot out of the cockpit. The pilot then had to manually open his chute.

The next step was adding rockets to the seat to provide some clearance from the airframe and extra altitude for the parachute to open. In the 50’s, rockets were so primitive that they couldn't get a pilot clear of the tail, so a more energetic catapult was developed to get the pilot clear faster, but the resulting G forces caused worse injuries than hitting a surface of the out of control jet.


The Johnsville Centrifuge and Space Museum of Warminster, Pennsylvania displays a historically significant remnant of the Naval Air Development Center (NADC) - The principal Navy Research, Development, Test and Evaluation Center for Aircraft, Airborne anti-submarine warfare and aircraft systems during the cold war.

On the museum grounds is a 200 foot tall, ejection seat test tower. It was used to test various ejection seats with an eye on maximising the flyer's chance of survival in face of seriously severe "G" forces. The ejection seat manufacturer's motto is, "The seat is designed for survival and not comfort."


The sloped ramp was the "rails" for the ejection seat testing. The test seat was placed at the base of that ramp on the right, and when fired, (hopefully) went up the ramp toward the top of the tower.

The sphere at the top of the tower is a modern cell phone antenna installation for T-Mobile and was not there during the cold war, seat testing era.


The explosives and rocketry were kept stored in the concrete bunker behind the blast shield wall. I believe the testing was also conducted and observed from within this building.


I could feel the primal dread of the cold war oozing from the ruins, standing there looking at the bunker.


There was a path outlined on the cracked asphalt between the bunker and the base of the test ramp tower indicating where the highly explosive materials where taken from storage and installed in the flight seats.


The flame and hot gases launching the ejection seat was channeled and directed to a couple areas - areas marked so that test observers would know where not to stand (or where to set up their marshmallows to be roasted). The starkness of the scene was haunting - and the cigarette butt lying in a crack somehow ironic.


A close up of the ramp that the ejection seat rode on.


To measure the "G" forces of the launch, the test ramp was marked by a signboard showing each foot in height. They were removed when the tower was painted. I hope they get reinstalled someday.


The test ramp and tower were built by the Martin-Baker Aircraft Company, Ltd. of England.

Martin-Baker is the leading manufacturer of ejection seat in the free world. Their website proudly show a counter indicating how many lives their ejections seats have saved so far - as I type this, 7317 lives altogether, and 11 so far this year.

The Martin-Baker company website has some amazing videos - such as this High-Speed Test showing a fiery ride on a rocket sled and an eye-popping test of an ejection seat.

I found it interesting that the Martin-Baker Company's co-founder, Valentine Baker was born at Llanfairfechan in North Wales, and was an esteemed flying instructor.

In addition to ejection seats, the NADC helped develop and prototype electronic equipment, including avionics, displays, communication, navigation, and computers.

The GPS receivers used by all of the armed services were developed here. You can thank the NADC for your car’s navigation system - as long as you aren't going through Wichita Falls, Texas.