Premature ejection caused crash

Premature ejection

An unintended ejection caused the May 21 crash that left an F-15 Eagle embedded in a marsh at St. George Island, Air Force officials say. The plane's pilot, who parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida Panhandle island, suffered minor injuries.

Ouch, seems he got his harness snagged on the ejection handle. Luckily he was ok, and did not hurt anyone else, although the now $35M paperweight landed 160 yard from a house.

I've hears of similar happeneings before. Also the BAe Harrier GR.5 demonstrator went into an unrecoverable spin on a test flight so the pilot ejected. Miraculously the act of ejecting righted the plane and it flew straight out over the Atlantic Ocean until it ran out of fuel! Bizarre.

You may have seen a programme called "When Pilots Eject". It shows some remarkable ejections, there is a USN A-6 Intruder in which the Navigator 'partially ejected' accidentally, by which I mean that his seat rode up the rail but the rocket never fired and the pilot had to land with him sticking up out of the top of the cockpit from the chest up. This must have been terrifying for the poor chap!

The most amazingly lucky one of all was a Yak-38 pilot whose aircraft ran off the ende of the carrier deck and he was actually underwater when he ejected, by freak chance he shot up out of the water and landed on the deck of the ship!

If you see it advertised I recommend it.