The ‘curious damn contraption’ that has saved 7,694 lives (together with mine)

The cocoon-like cockpit of the AW52 prototype jet was comfortable for a person of John “Jo” Lancaster’s imposing, square-shouldered construct – like being behind the wheel of a Formula 1 ­racing automobile. But the pilot’s seat was removed from inviting. Climbing in, the 30-year-old Bomber Command veteran eyed it warily.

Its rudimentary body, constructed from mild alloy tubing and sprayed British racing inexperienced, was nothing like standard equipment. There had been two units of chunky, fawn-­colored canvas straps assembly at giant buckles and its footrests and thigh guards appeared to belong on a white-knuckle fairground journey.

The pink deal with protruding from an oblong field above the check pilot’s head did nothing to encourage confidence, nor did the telescopic metallic tube fastened to the again of the seat – the so-called “ejection gun”, inside which had been two explosive fees, the rationale these unusual new units had been already identified, considerably dismissively, as “bang seats”.

Pilots had beforehand been accustomed to sitting on some model of bucket seat, both sporting a parachute on their again, or sitting on one. Standard apply in extremis was to roll your plane onto its again, launch the harness and fall out, opening your parachute once you’d fallen a secure distance.

But with the arrival of the jet age, plane had been getting quicker, and bailing out manually may show deadly. In one yr alone, 24 check pilots had misplaced their lives, many due to an absence of a fully-developed plane escape ­system. Would it work?

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The jury was nonetheless ­ out so far as Jo and his contemporaries ­ had been involved.

“I knew what it did, but hadn’t had any particularly detailed instructions on its operation; it was just there,” he recalled. It definitely appeared “bloody dangerous”.

The very last thing Jo did earlier than taxiing onto the runway at RAF Bitteswell in Leicestershire on Monday May 30, 1949, was to take away a small pin from the ejection gun containing the explosive cost.

His ejection seat was now dwell. For the following 20 minutes after taking off, he carried out a sequence of runs within the AW52 – dubbed the “Flying Wing” as a result of it had no tail and value the equal of £7.2million right now – earlier than climbing into shiny sunshine at 5,000 ft to start a ­shallow dive. Coming again by the clouds at 320mph, the turbulence elevated.

“The first indication something was wrong was instantaneous – a sudden bucking fore and aft like a rollercoaster.”

The bucking turned more and more frenetic. At 3,000 ft and dropping quick, Jo’s intestine informed him the prototype jet may break up at any second. Even if it did keep intact, he feared he can be knocked unconscious and the jet would plough into the bottom. The “curious damn contraption”, as he later described the ejection seat to me, was now his solely probability of escaping the doomed plane and seeing his beloved spouse Betty and their two-year-old son, Graham, once more.

Having ditched the cover, he grabbed the deal with with each fingers and pulled it down in entrance of his face. One of Britain’s finest aviators was rocketing in the direction of the sting of oblivion.

The ejection seat carried by Jo Lancaster’s prototype jet had been born of tragedy. Its inventor, James Martin, a farmer’s son from County Down, had left faculty at 15 and arrived in England in 1919 aged 26 with £10 in his pocket and no {qualifications} or job.

He started shopping for surplus military vehicles, overhauling and modifying their engines, then promoting them on. In 1928, he moved right into a ­former linoleum manufacturing facility in Denham, Bucks, and the next yr booked flying classes with First World War flying ace Valentine Baker. The pair hit it off immediately.

By 1934, the signal on the Denham manufacturing facility learn: “The Martin-Baker Aircraft Company”. Martin would design the plane, Baker can be co-designer and check pilot.

Now eight years later, at RAF Wing in Aylesbury, on September 12, 1942, Baker, 54, was getting ready to take their newest prototype – the MB3 fighter, which may fly at 400mph – for its second check flight. That morning, Baker’s forehead was uncharacteristically furrowed as he turned to Martin and stated: “I have a feeling, Jimmy, that something is not quite right.”

His hunch was proved right. Having ­hurtled down the runway, the engine died, then all of a sudden roared again into life earlier than reducing out once more at 50 ft with no room to land. Baker disappeared over a line of bushes and out of sight. Seconds later there was an enormous explosion. The sight that greeted Martin would hang-out him for the remainder of his days.

The MB3 had been destroyed and high-octane gasoline was blazing, its pilot trapped in his cockpit, unable to flee the flames. As the flames subsided, Baker’s damaged physique was pried from the wreckage. Martin flung himself down onto a grass financial institution. “My dear Val,” he sobbed. He would always remember the stench of burning flesh. The incident virtually definitely impressed his best invention.

In October 1944, the Air Ministry requested James Martin to give you a design for an escape system. And the next January, he had a prototype seat.

It was fitted to rails and, in an emergency, after ditching the cockpit hood, an explosive cost would shoot it upwards and out of the plane – at the least 20 ft into the air, safely away from the plane’s tail fin – earlier than the pilot parachuted to the bottom. At least in concept. First they needed to check it on a rig on the bottom.

Standing again, his prototype loaded with sandbags weighing simply over 14 stone, Martin pulled on a size of cable.

There was a considerable explosion and his “ejection seat” shot quickly up the rig’s information rails. It was the primary small step in what can be its outstanding journey. But he had no concept how a dwelling backbone can be affected. He referred to as for a human volunteer, ideally one weighing round 14 stone.

Enter Bernard Ignatius Lynch. The burly, husky-voiced southern Irishman, identified at all times as “Benny”, was an engineering fitter in Martin-Baker’s experimental plane division and dedicated to James Martin, for whom he had labored for almost a decade.

Just 4 days after the sandbag check, Lynch solid apart his work overalls, showing for this particular occasion in certainly one of his finest pinstripe fits, polished black lace-up boots, and a freshly laundered shirt and tie.

Martin had set the cost so he got here to relaxation solely 4 ft eight inches from the bottom. Lynch slid slowly again right down to earth to a refrain of cheers. He unstrapped, stood up, adjusted his jacket, and knowledgeable Martin he had “suffered no discomfort”. In the next weeks, news of the pioneering invention unfold quick.

Many had been wanting to see the rig and check it out, and none extra so than a journalist from Aeroplane journal. He arrived at Denham to jot down an article, and took journey quantity 14. Propelled to a top of 10 ft, he complained of extreme again ache. When Martin referred to as the following day to seek out out if the journalist was okay, he was informed: “He’s in hospital.”

“What? Why?” “He’s broken his back.”

Martin couldn’t perceive how his system had produced such devastating outcomes. But after two extra years of intensive testing, the prototype was prepared for in-flight testing. Could it save the lifetime of a human being from ­an plane?

After parachute coaching, Benny Lynch swapped his ­pinstripe go well with for overalls, and a Biggles-style leather-based flying helmet, as he arrived on the Martin-Baker airfield at Chalgrove, Oxfordshire, on July 24, 1946.

At 9.15pm, travelling at round 320mph at 8,000 ft over the airfield, piloted by Jack Scott in a two-seater Meteor jet, he triggered the seat. Almost instantaneously there was a flash of flame and a puff of smoke as the 2 cartridges fired completely in sequence.

The seat raced up its runners at 60 ft a second and shot Lynch into the unknown. “The punch was powerful but not painful,” he recalled. Once he had risen 24 ft, a drogue gun fired, blasting the stabilising parachute out from the highest of his seat. So far, so good. The Meteor was gone.

Having launched himself from the seat and activated his ­parachute, he took within the neat patchwork of rural England beneath him. ­It had taken 30 seconds in all. And then the airfield got here into view.

Benny Lynch made a textbook touchdown. He had cemented his place in British aviation historical past. The icing on the cake was a public home inside straightforward strolling distance, the place he rewarded himself with a ­welcome-home pint.

Now excessive above Warwickshire, Jo Lancaster confronted the prospect of changing into the primary ever pilot to make use of an ejection seat in an emergency. Grabbing the deal with firmly with each fingers, he pulled it down in entrance of his face with all his power.

He got here to his senses freed from the Flying Wing, wriggled the harness freed from his shoulders and actually fell out of the seat. He reached for the ripcord and pulled it exhausting to inflate his parachute. For the primary time, he felt secure. He had ejected efficiently at 3,000 ft.

But the place was the metallic seat? Still falling and, if it hit him, he can be in deep trouble. Out of nowhere it shot previous him and disappeared. The floor raced as much as meet him. He went by a hedge like a pendulum and crumpled down exhausting, touchdown shoulder first.

For some time he lay there surprised, attempting to make sense of the drama that had engulfed him for the previous few minutes. The wind had been knocked out of his lungs and he was certain he had damaged his shoulder. He heard a voice calling to him. A close-by farmer ran up and helped him collect up his parachute. “He took me to his farmhouse 100 yards away where his wife produced a cup of tea.”

Using the farmer’s cellphone, he referred to as his base at Bitteswell. One of his fellow check pilots answered. “I simply said, ‘I’ve ejected’.”To date, the lives of seven,694 aircrew – together with my very own, in the course of the Gulf War – have been saved by a Martin-Baker ejection seat. But Jo Lancaster’s was the primary.

• Adapted by Matt Nixson from Eject! Eject! by John Nichol (Simon & Schuster, £20). Visit expressbookshop.com or name 020 3176 3832 without spending a dime UK P&P on orders over £25