Martin-Baker and the evolution of the aircraft escape systems
 The story of the jet age and the Meteor would be not be complete without reference to Martin-Baker. The company was established in 1929 by James Martin (later Sir James Martin) a brilliant self-made engineer and designer who began by designing a series of aircraft the MB1, MB2 & MB3 which were very advanced for their time and demonstrated his talent for innovation. It was in the prototype MB3 that his business partner Captain Valentine Baker was killed in September 1942 on a test flight when the engine failed at low level on takeoff. It was a terrible blow to Martin and his lifelong interest in aircraft safety and escape systems may well have stemmed from the tragedy. The loss of the aircraft was a serious blow to the company although his work designing and manufacturing vital components for aircraft such as the cartridge operated cable cutter for bomber command and the quick release canopy for the Spitfire ensured the survival of the company. In 1944 he was approached by the Air Ministry consistently impressed by his genius for simple, effective and above all rapid answers to problems with his most serious challenge to date, find a way for the pilot of a crippled aircraft to abandon it safely at high speed. As the war had progressed it had become increasingly impossible as aircraft speeds had increased to even escape the cockpit let alone avoid being struck by the tail demonstrated by the death of a test pilot in April 1944 who was killed attempting to abandon Meteor prototype DG204. The first brief included a requirement for aircraft currently in service and led to a design involving a long hinged arm with a hook which would literally pluck the pilot clear of the cockpit and hurl him to safety. The brief was later changed to only encompass new aircraft designs, an altogether more practical approach given the rapid developments of the time.  After initial experiments he was given a contract to develop two experimental ejection seats, these were first tested using a 16ft sloping ramp with weights to simulate the pilot but rapidly progressed to the point where a live subject was needed. This first of them being Martin-Baker fitter Benny (Bernard) Lynch. The first trials involved firing Lynch and others up the ramp with increasingly large explosive cartridges, on the fourth of these tests Lynch complained of back pain leading to the insight that it was not so much the peak G Force applied as to the rate of its application, this insight led to a two-cartridge ejection gun which would propel the seat and pilot smoothly and far enough up the ramp (now much longer) to simulate a safe exit had it been from an aircraft. In order to test the seat in flight they were given a war surplus Boulton-paul Defiant to which they fitted an ejection seat in place of its powered gun turret. They carried a number of successful tests from the Defiant at various heights and speeds using a weighted dummy but needed a faster aircraft to prove the concept fully. This was to be Gloster Meteor F.MK III EE416, from which Benny Lynch made the first live ejection on 24 July 1946. The first use of a Martin-Baker seat in an actual emergency was when test pilot J.O.Lancaster escaped from the prototype Armstrong Whitworth AW52 flying wing on 30th May 1949. Martin-Baker ejection seats were installed across a range of early RAF and Royal Navy jet aircraft and also sold to the US Navy where they replaced seats designed by American companies. They were even more widely used when rocket ejection systems were added enabling aircrew to escape from aircraft at very low speed and low level, even in a few recorded cases from underwater when the jet they were in was catapulted into the sea. They were also retrospectively fitted to American aircraft purchased by European airforces such as Luftwaffe Starfighters where they had an immediate impact on accident fatality rates. |
 They are many challenges to overcome to successfully eject from an aircraft, these begin with the physical force of the ejection itself but you also have violence of the slipstream which increases with the speed of the aircraft. It is also probable that the aircraft won't be flying straight and level when the ejection is initiated. To cope with these challenges modern seats are highly automated and very precise, They include systems to pull the body of the pilot back into the seat so it is in the optimum posture. There are also straps to pull in and restrain the pilots arms and legs to protect him from the wind blast as he exits the cockpit and automated timing systems that vary the time it takes to deploy the drogue and parachutes and to separate the pilot from the seat depending on how fast or how high the aircraft is at the time of ejection. These complex escape systems require extensive testing both during their development and through the life of their installation in an aircraft. This requires a variety of methods including static testing of individual components and entire seats in test rigs and on high speed rocket sleds. In the case of Martin-Baker nearly all types of seat are also fired from their modified Gloster Meteor Mk 7 test aircraft on more than one occasion. They have over the years operated a number of these including WA634 now preserved at RAF Cosford, with WL419 'Asterix' nearing the end of its service life while WA638 was fully rebuilt and returned to service in a glorious all-black colour scheme a few years ago. When James Martin began his work in 1944 he was unaware of the considerable effort that had already been carried out in Sweden & Germany. He may have seen reports of German pilots being ejected from their aircraft toward the end of the war and it is important to note that only five days after Benny Lynch's test ejection a Swedish pilot used an ejection seat in an actual emergency to abandon his SAAB J21-A1 pusher-engine aircraft. That said however Martin-Baker has built up an enviable reputation over the decades and is a world leader in the field of aircraft safety and escape technology. |