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I remember a comic where a pilot had to get out of P-38 Lightning. Earlier in the comic another pilot had hit the boom when bailing out. He got the inspiration
by slyall 4y ago
I remember a comic where a pilot had to get out of P-38 Lightning. Earlier in the comic another pilot had hit the boom when bailing out.
He got the inspiration of inverting the aircraft so gravity helped him clear the aircraft's boom.
- WalterBright 4y agoEven in conventional fighter aircraft, pilots would be killed from hitting the rudder or the stabilizer, or in some horrible cases, their chute would get caught on the tail and pull the hapless pilot down with it.
- jabl 4y agoAs another anecdote, IIRC the Avro Lancaster crew escape hatch was found to be too small when wearing a parachute. Probably a non-trivial number of crew met their end trapped inside the aircraft. There were IIRC plans to fix it, but they didn't want a hiccup in production due to implementing the fix, so it was never fixed.
- phire 4y agoThe development of the Avro Manchester (and then Lancaster) was a bit of a mess. The first Manchester prototype flew just five weeks before WW2 started, and might have been rushed into production. But there were major flaws with the reliability and power of the engines, and Avro were already working on the Lancaster to replace the Manchester before the first production models even entered service. The Lancaster is simply a Manchester, with the two Rolls-Royce Vulture engines replaced by four Merlin engines.
- jabl 4y agoIIRC from reading some WWII pilot memoirs that the recommended procedure was to pull up (to bleed off speed), unbuckle, and then push the stick forwards, and the negative G would throw the pilot out of the cockpit. Might be a bit more difficult in reality with the plane on fire and missing control surfaces, though.