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Ejecting from a fighter plane is not only dangerous. It is relatively common that people who eject develop spinal injuries because of it.
by marcodiego 5y ago
Ejecting from a fighter plane is not only dangerous. It is relatively common that people who eject develop spinal injuries because of it.
- zabzonk 5y agoThere are other problems. My Dad had an engine fire in his RAF Vampire over East England, didn't have an ejector seat, and decided it would be better to belly-land the thing, which he did, succesfully, in a cabbage field. He got out of the Vampire and trudged over to an old yokel who had been sitting watching all this. Dad: Is there a phone around here? Yokel: You'm will be paying for all them cabbages?
- upofadown 5y agoA reaction like that implies that the farmer was screwed over in a previous incident or has heard of someone that was.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dev_tty01 5y agoOr, more likely, perhaps he just has a typically dry British sense of humor.
- rendall 5y agoHmm. Was the farmer compensated?
- zabzonk 5y agoNo idea. I'm not sure he should have been, but he very probably was - but my Dad was risking his life to protect the farmer, so Dad would not have paid for it. And as far as I know people were compensated for RAF crashes on their property - they certainly are now today, though RAF pilots do everything they can (up to their own deaths) to avoid militraliry accidents.
- sealeck 5y agoHow was he risking his life to protect the farmer?
- zabzonk 5y ago
- mechanical_bear 5y agoYou could just answer the question. Obviously there are many readers here not intimately aware of RAF history.
- SirYandi 5y agoI assume they were referring to the blitz in WW2, where the RAF defended Britain from Nazi bombing runs.
- wtallis 5y agoThe plane in question doesn't seem to have entered service until shortly after the end of WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Vampire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Vampire
- zabzonk 5y agoThe question is really not about a particular fighter, but about the RAF.
- mechanical_bear 5y agoSo…rather than us guessing about which particular piece of information, you could just tell us and stop being so cryptic?
- 5y ago
- scarier 5y agoThis is supposedly where the idiom "bought the farm" comes from.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoI don't think so. It came from the life insurance paying off the family farm (if I understand correctly).
- ILMostro7 5y agoCloser to "not in my backyard", until and unless it absolutely and directly benefits ME
- InCityDreams 5y agoA lot of people sure don't get British humour, with a 'u'.
- JJMcJ 5y agoHence the old term "bought the farm" for a crash landing.
- Sebb767 5y agoFascinating, I always thought this referenced retiring on a farm.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y agoClose. The term originates from payments the War Department (now DoD) made to families after someone died in combat. In some cases the payment was enough for the family to pay off the mortgage, so the dead person was said to have "bought the farm."
- JJMcJ 5y agoExact origin is obscure. Some think it relates to paying a farmer, some that it refers to a death benefit.
- vba616 5y agoMeanwhile, in Soviet Russia: "For improved pilot survivability the Ka-50 is fitted with a NPP Zvezda K-37-800 ejection seat, which is a rare feature for a helicopter." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov_Ka-50 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov_Ka-50 Yes, ok, it has explosives to blow away the rotors. But how many different ways could that go wrong...
- qaq 5y agoThere was a single successful ejection in Ukraine so far
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoWell, you'd (theoretically) only do it when not doing it would be worse. So all those ways it could go wrong won't kill you, because you were already going to die. But if it all works, you might live.
- vba616 5y agoWhat if the rotor destruct system fired when you weren't ejecting tho? I can't find the specific incident easily by Googling, but I read a long time ago about an incident, possibly with F-16s, a training exercise where suddenly a sidewinder fired uncommanded, and took out another plane. You would think that would surely be human error, but investigation showed that apparently something just shorted out.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoWell, if it takes off the rotor, hopefully it also ejects you. If it doesn't, well, you should probably promptly initiate ejection. And the ejection should be easier, since there's now no pesky rotor in the way...
- foldr 5y agoAttack helicopters are designed to be survivable even in very rough landings, so it's not actually obvious that a risky ejection mechanism is going to increase your chances to survival in all instances.
- refurb 5y agoThis is my question. It's not unusual to be quite injured after an ejection - spinal injuries, wind blast injuries, parts from the canopy hitting you, hard landing. It's not uncommon for 20-something military pilots to be retired from flying after an ejection. Or at least on medical leave for a year or more.