Talk:Martin-Baker

Too many Lynches spoil the broth?

The company concluded that an explosive-powered ejection seat was the best solution. Studies found the limits of upward acceleration which the human body could stand and included experiments on a volunteer, Bernard Lynch, who was a fitter at the factory. Their first seat was successfully live tested by Bert Lynch on July 24, 1946, who ejected from a Gloster Meteor travelling at 320 mph (510 km/h) IAS at 8,000 feet (2,500 m) over Chalgrove Airfield in Oxfordshire.

Any relation?

NPOV

The paragraph which starts "It is the only company..." is a verbatim copy of some of the text at Martin-Baker's website [1]. I don't know if any other parts of the Wikipedia article are similarly sourced. (update- now I have an account I may as well sign this) Movis78 (talk) 17:52, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Good catch, I have altered it, but it may be useful to check the rest of article. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 22:28, 20 September 2009 (UTC).

Wow, blatant copy-viol, and it all seems to be done on one day, July 29, 2009 by one editor. Let's mark this one for a complete re-do. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 22:40, 20 September 2009 (UTC).

I'll say! It so happens I have been trolling through the "Flight" magazine archives, soo...Minorhistorian (talk) 05:18, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this article is not neutral. It contradicts the general article on ejector seats. That article claims that the Swedes and Germans got there first.The Swedish seat was used for a real emergency on 29 July 1946, just 5 days after Martin-Baker's first test ejection! (all data from the ejector seat article on Wikipedia. It looks like this article needs some serious revision. Marchino61 (talk) 04:51, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Martin-Baker ejection seat failures

The book "WAR STORIES - From an Army Pilot Flying in the CIA's Secret War in Laos" by Gerald Naekel bitterly criticizes the Martin-Baker J5 ejection seats installed in the OV-1 Mohawks he flew in Laos and Vietnam in the 1960s. He claims that there was "maybe a less than 50% chance of surviving any ejection" and that it was standard operating procedure to bail out of any seriously malfunctioning aircraft at five THOUSAND feet, because you were unlikely to survive a bailout at a lower level. He relates several examples of ejection seat failures or design problems that led to aircrew being killed or crippled. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hrc424 (talk • contribs) 07:47, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

FROM THE REFERENCED BOOK AUTHOR ABOUT THE MOHAWK EJECTION SEATS — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gnaekel (talk • contribs) 19:10, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

commentator, Hrc424, misread the issues of the Martin-Baker ejection seats used in the Grumman OV-1 Mohawk in the referenced book, which I authored. What is made clear in the book, in the Mohawk unit that lost what was likely more aircraft and people than all the other four units combined, was that ejections were often fatal. The losses of what we figured were half, or as he said, just a 50% chance of survival, is to the event causing the ejection, not to an actual malfunction of the seat. That a flight event, crash, lost engine on takeoff, or other event, that an ejection would likely be deadly, but as stated in the book what is said, it is that these crashes were usually because the aircraft was operating outside of the very narrow ejection envelope of the seat that had no additional rocket boost, as did the other services ejection seats, so it was that so often by the time the ejection was started, it was not the seat that failed, but the envelope itself.

But we felt the same about any ejection and the chance of dying, but that too, in the book, has to do with if you eject, rather than try to drag home a damaged aircraft, that your chances of survival in Laos, North Vietnam, in the CIA's war in northern Laos where we flew nightly for over six years, was slim. Of all the guys lost from the 20th ASTA/131st Aviation Co, NONE of them came back out of Laos after the war, even if successfully ejecting. None of them. You did not want to eject anywhere.

A typical example were the lost engine on takeoff and fatal ejections. In those cases, in the ones we could determine (again 27-years a Mohawk pilot, IP, SIP) is that the pilot probably had the throttles full forward, an autofeather happened, and if the stores were not dropped --IMMEDIATELY-- the Mohawk was going down. And from that point the pilot letting go of the throttles to go for the ejection that the Mohawk would roll over so fast that by the time the seat was coming out the aircraft was on its side or upside down. The only way to make that work was to close the throttles so the Mohawk was not rolling and then eject. And time to think that out? Milliseconds at most. Being an IP for decades shows a pilot would do this in training or checkrides, but in real life it was the delay of a few seconds trying to figure out what happened and what to do that took from them the time to survive. In these cases even the later rocket assist would not have saved most of these crewmembers.

But more troubling is Hrc424 inaccurate statement about ejections below 5,000. He misread or completely misunderstood what was stated, several times. Supposedly, from M-B and trained in the states, that if below 5,000 and the seat, once ejected, has not gone into the seat and chute separation that one needed to start to manually override and "roll out" of the seat. M-B lied to us. It is impossible and they had proved that to be a false some years before. When Captain Jim Schereck ejected at about 5,000 over Phu Bai on the night of March 4, 1971, (I was there talking to him) he rode his seat right onto the airport, with no manual separation after the drogue chute failed to deploy and pull out the main chute. It was about four days later when the M-B guys showed up in Vietnam and told how the main M-B test guy had broken both legs with the attempt at a manual separation starting at just under 10,000 on a failed ejection-and got a separation so close to the ground that he swung only once or so and smashed into the ground breaking both legs. That test guy had over 30 ejections, so M-B told us then that there was literally no chance, none at all, to get a manual separation below 5,000, and most likely below 10,000 as the M-B test guy, with over 30 ejections proved.

No where in the War Stories book is there any reference or even the suggestion to bail out of a Mohawk if below 5,000 feet--EXCEPT--and I hold Mohawk SIP status in two Armies, except if upside down, and then you must eject by 5,000 or the calculated trajectory of the descending Mohawk with a crewmember ejecting with the very aircraft coming down on them would likely not be successful. This is similar to the very small and narrow ejection envelope of the seats we had without the added rocket boost that on a takeoff, if the aircraft was sinking back to the ground, that below several hundred feet the momentum of the descending aircraft followed by a descending ejection seat would be deadly, and again, it is not from a failure of the seat, it was from the design failures in the Army Mohawk that it was not, then, equipped with the rocket assist, which is needed in any low altitude ejection, or on the runway.

--Gnaekel (talk) 19:08, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

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