In article ,
(Bill McClain) writes:
snippage

Hi all,

My Joshua was saying, "See, I told you people can eject from
Blackbirds!" Hey, who knew?

Am I right about that Foxbat? It was going Mach 3+ because of runaway
engines? What happened to aircraft and pilot? I'd imagine the
engines would flame out and the pilot would punch out; I'd hate to
think that the Foxbat would just blow up or something.

I wouldn't say that it was runaway engines, myself. Pretty much all
turbojet/turbofan engines are limited by the strength of teh materiels
of the rotating components (Compressors & Turbines). Remember that
these parts are highly loaded, and are spinning very fast, so there's
a lot of stress & strain on the blade roots and the disks that hold
the blades. The most common limit is the temperature of teh hot gas
entering the turbine section. That's pretty constant, though. 1500
Degrees K is 1500 Degress K no matter what altitude you're at, or how
fast you're going. The compreressor section, up front, is another
matter - As the engine's air is rammed into teh inlets and slowed
down, it's pressure and temperature increase. (This is, generally, a
good thing - the more air, at a higher pressure, the more thrust. As
teh air is compressed by each stage of the compressor, it heats up
more. At some point, it's possible to exceed teh tmperature limits of
the materiels in the compressor. Generally, the effects of an
overtemp in the compressor section aren't catastrophic, unless you're
above the limits for a long time. It will dramatically shorten the
useful life of those components, so an engine swap would be necessary
after landing to ensuer that the next flight's going to be safe.
It appears that that's what happened with the Foxbat over Egypt. The
pilot, for Tactical Reasons (Like getting his Recce Data back)
exceeded the placarded Mach 2.8 limit on the aircraft. He successfuly
landed the airplane in Egypt, and the engines got swapped.


Lowest and slowest ejections are kind of interesting, too. I bet the
Navy probably holds some interesting records there, mostly at sea.
)

There have been some successful underwater ejections. Those are a lot
more dangerous than they may sound. Water's heavy, thick stuff.
--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster