Ejections from F-106s (Read 7,178 times)

Mark,
When I was at the Griff 69-72 we had a young captain eject from a F-106A in 70 or 71, his engine went into after burner and wouldn't dissengage.........they told him to put it into a dive and eject. The recovery team said that the impact of the F-106A when it hit the bolder which was about 50 feet in diameter moved it 100 feet, the pilot got out with a broken left arm. As I recall he was walking with a limp and his back was a bit bruised too from the ejection.

Lauren

Mark, according to Jack Broughton, there were no successful ejections with the rocket seat. He, and other commanders, fought like mad to get a reliable ejection seat for the Six.
He goes in to quite a bit of detail in his most recent book, "Rupert Red Two".

Every ejection with the original rotating rocket seat ended up with the pilot dead.

I never heard of any partial ejection that the pilot survived the crash.

We had one at Minot in the early Sixties that the pilot rode it in to a snowy field near Flasher, North Dakota, South of Bismarck, with the seat rotated.

Maybe the instructor can give you more details.

Jim Too

:god_bless_usa

If he put it in a dive it may have been to prevent another pilotless landing.

Why not just turn the fuel off, flame it out, and try to restart. :

.... T handle ?[/quote]


I don't remember any fire suppresion on the six.

If memery serves, it had two fire loops (a & b or 1 & 2). It would flash with an overheat and go steady with fire. But I just don't remember any fire bottles on board.

There were successful ejections with the rocket seat. When I was stationed at McChord in the early 60's we had one pilot who ejected twice from the F-106 with the rocket seat. After the second time he got out of the Air Force.

One of the major problems with the seat is that it would start up the seat rail, rotate and then stop. There was a small universal joint under the seat that was determined to be the major problem.

I remember seeing a list in the late 60's, when I was at a conference at the F-106 depot, that showed all of the ejections that were attempted with the rocket seat. If I remember right there was a 9 out of 10 failure rate with the seat.

Tom

I happen to be lucky enough to have got the oppertunity to ride the training rocket seat at Tyndall.It was just like the actual seat only it was operated by high pressure air.When you pulled the handle it locked your feet in the pan ,slapped you in the ass and sent you up the rails for around ten feet or so and rotated you for rocket ride.

The humble, low and slow, de Havilland Beaver, L-20/U-6, doesn't come close to being a supersonic jet fighter.

Not even in your wildest dreams.

However, it has an ejection system.

Well, sort of.

The first time I flew in one, at The SCAB, the pilot gave us a briefing on how to get out of the Beaver in and emergency.

There were four of us going to Dicky Goober to fix a Saber Dog.

The first thing that would happen is the pilot yelling at you that we were going to abandon ship.

You probably would have noticed that the cooling fan on the front of the engine had quit turning, and it got very quiet.

Chances are you would not be asleep during the flight.

The Beaver is, to say the least, noisy, bouncy, and the back seat is not very comfortable.

At that point the pilot would grab a handle next to the pilot seat and pull it.

The pulling of the handle pulled the pins on the back doors.

The back doors would fall off in to the empty air.

Then the back seat passengers would go out the door and, as they fell through the air, the passengers would pull the rip cord and then ride the silk elevator down to the ground.

The pilot, and whoever was in the right seat, would pull the handle under the front of those seats.

As they pulled the handles, they would push back on the seats.

That would cause the seats to fall back to the back seat.

Then the pilot, and the guy in the right seat, would roll out the openings where the back doors had been.

They, too, would fall in to open air and then open their chutes and await the gentle landing on Terra Firma.

I have been told that it was possible to get out the front doors with a chute on your back, but pretty tight quarters in an emergency.

Thus the "ejection" system.

I never heard of anyone bailing out of a Beaver.

They are so tough and able to land on just about any surface longer than a dollar bill, there may not be much need to jump out while in flight.

Bur, Air Force regulations said the passengers had to be briefed.

On the way home from Dicky Goober there was no briefing.

Just get in and go.

Jim Too

:god_bless_usa

May just be urban legend, but.... Dover AFB is surrounded by marshlands. As a kid ('66-'68) I spent plenty of time out there are can personally attest that the thick, pudding-like mud is very very deep. So as the story goes, a 'Six' flames out just after takeoff out over the marshes the pilot ejects. He's on seat-oxygen and his chute "streamers" (partial malfunction, so he's got something slowing him down). He hits the muck and is buried alive. Watching in amazement from their duck-blind (the Dover area was great for hunting), two seargents rushed over where they found a bit of the pilot's unburried streamer, and pulling hard, they managed to pluck the guy and his life from the muck. Anyone heard of that one?

My Dad told me a story during WWII of a crew member of a B-17 that was on fire. The crew was jumping out but his parachute was in the fire.
is options were to ride the aircraft into the ground and burn with it or jump.
He jumped and hit some big fir trees before he hit the ground. Story goes that he hit the branches just right to slow his fall. He was beat up and cut but he survived.
Real luck man.