hi-speed ejections

My son was asking me about ejecting from jet aircraft. He's 8, and
he's convinced that no matter how fast an airplane is going, it's
possible to eject. I said I didn't think that the guy who was flying
the MiG-25 at Mach 3+ was able to eject from his aircraft with the
runaway engines (if that's what was happening), and that the SR-71
isn't really something you can safely eject from at max speed and
altitude. Any knowledgeable remarks I can pass along to him?

(Bill McClain) wrote:

My son was asking me about ejecting from jet aircraft. He's 8, and
he's convinced that no matter how fast an airplane is going, it's
possible to eject. I said I didn't think that the guy who was flying
the MiG-25 at Mach 3+ was able to eject from his aircraft with the
runaway engines (if that's what was happening), and that the SR-71
isn't really something you can safely eject from at max speed and
altitude. Any knowledgeable remarks I can pass along to him?

Subject: F-15...Longish
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military
Date: 2003-10-03 19:22:42 PST

Captain Brian Udell, an F-15E fighter pilot will acknowledge the
anniversary of that fateful night without celebration because his
Weapons Officer, Captain Dennis White, was killed during his ejection
- or drowned after parachuting into a heavy sea at night.

Udell miraculously survived one of the fastest known ejections in
history at more than 780 mph. But exposing his body to the impact of
supersonic speed had its special price tag.

On a pitch dark evening, Udell and White took off from Seymour-Johnson
AFB, in a four-ship formation. Their F-15E's were missioned to fly out
over the Atlantic, split into pairs, then turn and engage. " We'd turn
around and come at each other like we were in a jousting match", said
Udell. But that dark night, they had to rely totally on their internal
radar to ensure they'd never fly dangerously close to the opposing
pair.

Udell and White were in one of those turns when their tragic saga
began. "I was reading my heads-up display, and it showed me in a
60-degree turn with my nose tilted 10 degrees down and going 400 knots
at 4,000 feet. Perfect ," Udell said. "But as we're in this turn, I
start hearing a wind rush - sort of like the sound you hear when
you're increasing your speed down the highway and
have to turn up your radio. But in a jet, this kind of wind rush
usually comes when you're accelerating in excess of 500 knots." "I
flipped on the electronic attitude direction indicator. It tells you
if you're going up or down, making a right or left turn, going upside
down or right side up, how fast you're going, and what altitude you're
at. And it says I'm headed straight for the earth at about 600 knots
[nearly 700 mph]."

Because he didn't know which set of instruments was telling the truth,
Udell moved his controls .. back and forth. The electronic back up
system changed, but the heads-up display was stuck .. and they were
screaming down toward the dark ocean below like a giant lawn dart.

" The minimum altitude before ejecting out of an out-of-control
aircraft is 10,000 feet. And the maximum safe ejection using our ACES
II ejection seat was 600 knots. So I had to make a quick decision."

"By this time we had penetrated 10,000 feet . . and we were exceeding
600 knots," on a a pitch black night, with no horizon to work with. I
shouted : ' Bail out ! Bail out ! A second or two later, while
descending rapidly through 4,500 feet and traveling faster than a
rifle bullet . . White ejected.

Passing through 3,000 feet at more than 780 mph - the pilot Udell
ejected into the black. " I made the decision to bail out at 10,000
feet, got into good position and pulled the handles at 6,000 feet,
left the aircraft at 3,000 feet, and got my parachute open at just
under 1,000 feet," he said, taking a deep breath. "So if you crunch
the numbers, I had about a half second to spare.
If I'd waited for more than a half second, I would have impacted the
water still in the seat," he added [ clapping his hands together in a
sobering smack that echoed through the room].

As Udell floated to earth at the end of a parachute, he couldn't
remember pounding into those granite-hard shock waves as his
unarmored body pierced the sonic barrier. Those three seconds that
sent all 190 pounds of him hurtling at a supersonic velocity appear
mercifully lost forever." I don't know if it was because of the trauma
my body went through, or the terror of : ' This is happening ! ' " he
said [ his eyes widening.]

Now, slowly descending, Udell felt as though he'd been struck by a
train. His helmet and oxygen mask had been ripped from his head. His
gloves and watch also were torn off. With the zippers still closed,
his wallet and a water bottle had flown through his G-suit pockets.
Beneath his flight suit, his T-shirt was shredded and his shoes laces
were imbedded into the leather.

Udell had no clue to the extent of his injuries, and began going
through his post-ejection checklist. " You check the parachute canopy
to make sure it's deployed properly ," said Udell. " I wasn't dropping
like a rock, I figured it must be OK. and no visor or oxygen mask to
be concerned with since my entire helmet had been blown off." He
attempted to inflate his life preserver, but it had been shredded in
the ejection. He figured he'd better reel in his life raft [that
automatically deploys during ejection] to ensure he had some kind of
flotation device when entering the water. That's when he discovered
his left arm was injured. He hauled in the raft with his teeth and
right arm. "Just about the time I got my hand on the raft, I hit the
water."

His struggle to get into the raft then began. He'd been trained in
different techniques to board the one-man boat, but with four good
limbs. He was down to one. An even that one limb had been dislocated .
.. but somehow a shoulder had popped back into place.

After making several unsuccessful attempts, before he simply
stopped struggling and started praying. "This was
notput-your-hands-together-and-bow-your-head-praying," Udell
said candidly. "This was face-to-face, ' Hey, God . . I need your
help' kind of praying."

He gave it one more try, and somehow managed to inch his way onto the
life raft. Sitting inside the rubber boat, he had his right leg
straight out in front of him except for the part below the knee which
dangled at an obscene 90-degree angle over the side. With his single
good arm he grabbed the lower leg and jerked it into the raft. It
flopped 180 degrees in the other direction. He adjusted it until the
entire limb pointed the same direction. Then he did the
same for his left ankle that had twisted around 180 degrees in another
direction. " There was just nothing fastening them all togeth-er and
the skin around them was distended out of proportion," he said,
shaking his head.

Once he had crudely immobilized both useless legs and his useless left
arm, Udell searched his 6-foot 1 frame for other injuries. Finding
nothing life-threatening he let his training take over and clicked
into a prevent-shock mode. Out of an emergency pack he drank some
water .. then he tried to get warm.

" When the raft deploys, only the main donut ring inflates," he
explained. " The raft's bottom and the side spray shields must each be
manually inflated. Otherwise, I'm still hanging down in the water, and
the waves were crashing over me."

At that point, chilled to the bone, Udell tried to inflate the bottom
section of the raft. "But when I first put the inflation tube in my
mouth and tried to blow, I couldn't create a seal around the tube," he
said. " I reached up and touched my face for the first time and it
felt like a dish of kid's Play Dough. My lips were especially
deformed. During the ejection, some blood vessels
and underlying soft tissue in my face had burst and my whole face had
no definition."

Despite his desperate situation, he laughed when considered that he
looked like Mush Mouth in a Fat Albert cartoon. "I stuck the tube back
in my mouth," he said, still chuckling. " but the only way I could get
a seal around the tube was to hold it between my teeth then clamp my
fingers of my one good around my lips. My lips protruded beyond my
hand's first three fingers, so they were hanging out there pretty
far."

Udell inflated the bottom of the raft, and finally puffed up the spray
shields. And after bailing out water with plastic bags from his
survival kit, he finally began to warm." I was exhausted and wanted to
sleep . . but was afraid I'd never wake up again," he said.

Meanwhile, the three other F-15E crews, incredibly had managed to
pinpoint the crash site [within two miles] based on his last radio
communications. The Coast Guard was on the way.

Udell spent four hours in the night water before a Coast Guard
helicopter found him. Even though his bulging lips could barely form
the syllables, Udell kept hollering out to the empty sea for his
flightmate: " DENNNNNNISSS ! " ...
No answer. He also thought of his wife, Kristi who was four months
pregnant with their first child.

Using an emergency radio, he directed the Coast Guard helicopter to
his location. " Because I didn't want the rotor wash to knock me out
of the raft, I asked them not to (hover) too close," he said. Aviation
Survivalman Jim Peterson fished Udell out of the raft and fastened him
into a litter. "He was in a lot of pain, but he just bit his lip and
dealt with it," Peterson said. "I even accidently bumped his legs a
few times, but he never complained. Considering
that he was all busted up . . he was a very strong man." Later, Udell
admitted, he was so weakened by his exertion in the cold water he'd
had difficulty pushing down the emergency radio button.

And now cold struck again. " When he [Peterson] secured me in the
litter, the helicopter flew overhead and lowered its winch, its rotors
kicked up the wind and waves, and spray that felt like steel needles
were hitting me and also created an effective air conditioner, giving
me another big chill. However, I finally got pulled aboard, so I owe
those guys a lot."

Once in the helicopter, the Coast Guard rescue crew rushed the downed
pilot to the nearest hospital. " When I arrived at the hospital, it
seemed like 20 or 30 doctors and female nurses surrounded me," Udell
said. " Within seconds I was buck naked, and all I could think about
was that good ol' mom advice : ' Brian, make sure you have clean
underwear on because you never know when you'll
be in an accident.' "

Soon an orthopedic surgeon walks in. He looks at the X-ray. "Right
knee dislocated. Left ankle broken. Left arm dislocated," the doctor
said. "I'm thinking, 'All right, pain medication,' " Udell said
wistfully. "But without a hi, hello or how are you, that doctor walks
up to me, grabs my right knee, and POP ! He snaps it back into place.
I start screaming. Then he goes to my left ankle, POP ! I'm screaming
even louder. Then he takes my left arm , POP ! " Doctors finally
administered morphine, and he slipped into a happy place.

Kristi Udell arrived in the hospital emergency room just as her
husband began wailing in anguish. The doctor explained to her what was
happening. "When I saw him, he looked vaguely familiar," Kristi said,
shuddering at the thought. "His face was puffed up to the size of a
basketball, and he had a gash that went across his eye." "How do I
look?" he asked. "Great," she lied. In addition to his mangled face
and broken and dislocated limbs .. he had a gash across his chest ..
broken rib ..the back of his right thigh also had been slashed open ..
both arms were a grotesque black and blue .. and various other
scrapes, cuts and bruises maligned his body.

But he was alive.

During his first few hours in the hospital, the Udells found out White
hadn't been so lucky. The violent force of the ejection killed him
instantly. Still choking up at the memory, Udell said,"That was a
depressing time for me. I'd held up pretty good until then. But when I
found out he was dead, I just lost it. Dennis had left a wife and two
kids."

Doctors gave Udell additional morphine to help him sleep.
Unfortunately, the drug caused him to dream. " I dreamt someone jumped
on my leg, and the thought made me jerk and I popped my left knee
popped back out of its socket." Because his leg was already in a cast,
it wasn't until three days later that doctors found the knee
dislocated once again. " My kneecap was swollen to the size
of a cantaloupe and laid over to the side kind of funny," Udell said.
His tendons and ligaments had been torn apart, so nothing held his
knee in place. It snapped out of joint three more times before they
managed to cast it again. After the swelling went down, two titanium
rods had to be temporarily inserted into the knee to help hold it in
place and keep it immobilized.

After four surgeries and with six stainless steel screws in each leg,
Udell began intensive physical therapy and his trek to walk . . and
maybe even fly again. Nearly two months after the accident, he took
his first step.

"I didn't want to just lie around," Udell said. " I'd get in my
wheelchair and wheel myself down to physical therapy every morning and
work out for about an hour. Then I'd do the same thing in the
afternoon. By the time I wheeled myself back to my hospital room that
evening, I was exhausted and would go right to sleep." For months,
Udell increased his rehabilitation workouts until he was riding a
bike, lifting weights, doing water exercises and other various
muscle-building routines eight to ten hours each day. By the sixth
month, he felt he was ready to fly again .. it was something nobody
had thought possible.

"Some people get depressed when going through the slow rehabilitation
process," said Kriquette Alexander, senior program director where
Udell performed much of his rehab. "But Brian was an inspiration to
everyone. He pushed himself. And was very focused. He's a cool
critter."

Even after so much progress, a skeptical medical board still had to be
convinced that he was ready to fly again. "They took me and a
'healthy' guy out to an airplane to demonstrate an emergency ground
egress out of the aircraft," Udell said smugly. "We had to pretend the
aircraft was on fire .. unstrap .. jump overboard .. and run 50 yards
away. They timed us both. I beat the other guy by 10 seconds."

Ten months after the injury, after going through a battery of tests
and getting waivers for the metal screws he'd carry for the rest of
his life, Udell flew again. On his second flight, he soared back over
the same area where he crashed. "I was just so excited to get back in
the cockpit, I didn't have time to get scared," said Udell, whose
father, retired Air Force Colonel Maurice Udell, taught him to fly
when he was 9. "I just love to fly. It's all I ever wanted to do."

Although Brian is back in the cockpit, he still has to go through
stringent medical exams each year to stay on flying status. That's
because the injuries to his limbs make him highly susceptible to
degenerative arthritis. But for Udell, who had graduated at the top of
his undergraduate pilot training class and had a strong resume package
into the Thunderbirds before the crash, flying is no longer the number
one priority in his life. He said, " When I clung onto that raft for
dear life, I wasn't thinking about flying or drinking beer with my
buddies. I prayed to God that he would let me see my wife again, and
be there when my child was born."

His first son was born while he labored through rehabilitation. In the
hospital room during his first son's birth, the baby's head just made
its way out into this world when he opened his eyes and looked up at
his father. Brian's eyes welled up with tears . . it was God's answer
to one of Udell's desperate prayers.

[From the "FIGHTER PILOT" email list.]

Wow!!

"Bill McClain" wrote in message
om...
My son was asking me about ejecting from jet aircraft. He's 8, and
he's convinced that no matter how fast an airplane is going, it's
possible to eject. I said I didn't think that the guy who was flying
the MiG-25 at Mach 3+ was able to eject from his aircraft with the
runaway engines (if that's what was happening), and that the SR-71
isn't really something you can safely eject from at max speed and
altitude. Any knowledgeable remarks I can pass along to him?

I attended a talk by an SR-71 pilot a little while back and,
according to him, people have safely ejected from an SR-71
at speed and altitude.

Tony

Incredible story Mike, Thanks!


On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 02:57:11 GMT, Mike Marron
wrote:

(Bill McClain) wrote:

My son was asking me about ejecting from jet aircraft. He's 8, and
he's convinced that no matter how fast an airplane is going, it's
possible to eject. I said I didn't think that the guy who was flying
the MiG-25 at Mach 3+ was able to eject from his aircraft with the
runaway engines (if that's what was happening), and that the SR-71
isn't really something you can safely eject from at max speed and
altitude. Any knowledgeable remarks I can pass along to him?

Subject: F-15...Longish
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military
Date: 2003-10-03 19:22:42 PST

Captain Brian Udell, an F-15E fighter pilot will acknowledge the
anniversary of that fateful night without celebration because his
Weapons Officer, Captain Dennis White, was killed during his ejection
- or drowned after parachuting into a heavy sea at night.

Udell miraculously survived one of the fastest known ejections in
history at more than 780 mph. But exposing his body to the impact of
supersonic speed had its special price tag.

On a pitch dark evening, Udell and White took off from Seymour-Johnson
AFB, in a four-ship formation. Their F-15E's were missioned to fly out
over the Atlantic, split into pairs, then turn and engage. " We'd turn
around and come at each other like we were in a jousting match", said
Udell. But that dark night, they had to rely totally on their internal
radar to ensure they'd never fly dangerously close to the opposing
pair.

Udell and White were in one of those turns when their tragic saga
began. "I was reading my heads-up display, and it showed me in a
60-degree turn with my nose tilted 10 degrees down and going 400 knots
at 4,000 feet. Perfect ," Udell said. "But as we're in this turn, I
start hearing a wind rush - sort of like the sound you hear when
you're increasing your speed down the highway and
have to turn up your radio. But in a jet, this kind of wind rush
usually comes when you're accelerating in excess of 500 knots." "I
flipped on the electronic attitude direction indicator. It tells you
if you're going up or down, making a right or left turn, going upside
down or right side up, how fast you're going, and what altitude you're
at. And it says I'm headed straight for the earth at about 600 knots
[nearly 700 mph]."

Because he didn't know which set of instruments was telling the truth,
Udell moved his controls .. back and forth. The electronic back up
system changed, but the heads-up display was stuck .. and they were
screaming down toward the dark ocean below like a giant lawn dart.

" The minimum altitude before ejecting out of an out-of-control
aircraft is 10,000 feet. And the maximum safe ejection using our ACES
II ejection seat was 600 knots. So I had to make a quick decision."

"By this time we had penetrated 10,000 feet . . and we were exceeding
600 knots," on a a pitch black night, with no horizon to work with. I
shouted : ' Bail out ! Bail out ! A second or two later, while
descending rapidly through 4,500 feet and traveling faster than a
rifle bullet . . White ejected.

Passing through 3,000 feet at more than 780 mph - the pilot Udell
ejected into the black. " I made the decision to bail out at 10,000
feet, got into good position and pulled the handles at 6,000 feet,
left the aircraft at 3,000 feet, and got my parachute open at just
under 1,000 feet," he said, taking a deep breath. "So if you crunch
the numbers, I had about a half second to spare.
If I'd waited for more than a half second, I would have impacted the
water still in the seat," he added [ clapping his hands together in a
sobering smack that echoed through the room].

As Udell floated to earth at the end of a parachute, he couldn't
remember pounding into those granite-hard shock waves as his
unarmored body pierced the sonic barrier. Those three seconds that
sent all 190 pounds of him hurtling at a supersonic velocity appear
mercifully lost forever." I don't know if it was because of the trauma
my body went through, or the terror of : ' This is happening ! ' " he
said [ his eyes widening.]

Now, slowly descending, Udell felt as though he'd been struck by a
train. His helmet and oxygen mask had been ripped from his head. His
gloves and watch also were torn off. With the zippers still closed,
his wallet and a water bottle had flown through his G-suit pockets.
Beneath his flight suit, his T-shirt was shredded and his shoes laces
were imbedded into the leather.

Udell had no clue to the extent of his injuries, and began going
through his post-ejection checklist. " You check the parachute canopy
to make sure it's deployed properly ," said Udell. " I wasn't dropping
like a rock, I figured it must be OK. and no visor or oxygen mask to
be concerned with since my entire helmet had been blown off." He
attempted to inflate his life preserver, but it had been shredded in
the ejection. He figured he'd better reel in his life raft [that
automatically deploys during ejection] to ensure he had some kind of
flotation device when entering the water. That's when he discovered
his left arm was injured. He hauled in the raft with his teeth and
right arm. "Just about the time I got my hand on the raft, I hit the
water."

His struggle to get into the raft then began. He'd been trained in
different techniques to board the one-man boat, but with four good
limbs. He was down to one. An even that one limb had been dislocated .
. but somehow a shoulder had popped back into place.

After making several unsuccessful attempts, before he simply
stopped struggling and started praying. "This was
notput-your-hands-together-and-bow-your-head-praying," Udell
said candidly. "This was face-to-face, ' Hey, God . . I need your
help' kind of praying."

He gave it one more try, and somehow managed to inch his way onto the
life raft. Sitting inside the rubber boat, he had his right leg
straight out in front of him except for the part below the knee which
dangled at an obscene 90-degree angle over the side. With his single
good arm he grabbed the lower leg and jerked it into the raft. It
flopped 180 degrees in the other direction. He adjusted it until the
entire limb pointed the same direction. Then he did the
same for his left ankle that had twisted around 180 degrees in another
direction. " There was just nothing fastening them all togeth-er and
the skin around them was distended out of proportion," he said,
shaking his head.

Once he had crudely immobilized both useless legs and his useless left
arm, Udell searched his 6-foot 1 frame for other injuries. Finding
nothing life-threatening he let his training take over and clicked
into a prevent-shock mode. Out of an emergency pack he drank some
water .. then he tried to get warm.

" When the raft deploys, only the main donut ring inflates," he
explained. " The raft's bottom and the side spray shields must each be
manually inflated. Otherwise, I'm still hanging down in the water, and
the waves were crashing over me."

At that point, chilled to the bone, Udell tried to inflate the bottom
section of the raft. "But when I first put the inflation tube in my
mouth and tried to blow, I couldn't create a seal around the tube," he
said. " I reached up and touched my face for the first time and it
felt like a dish of kid's Play Dough. My lips were especially
deformed. During the ejection, some blood vessels
and underlying soft tissue in my face had burst and my whole face had
no definition."

Despite his desperate situation, he laughed when considered that he
looked like Mush Mouth in a Fat Albert cartoon. "I stuck the tube back
in my mouth," he said, still chuckling. " but the only way I could get
a seal around the tube was to hold it between my teeth then clamp my
fingers of my one good around my lips. My lips protruded beyond my
hand's first three fingers, so they were hanging out there pretty
far."

Udell inflated the bottom of the raft, and finally puffed up the spray
shields. And after bailing out water with plastic bags from his
survival kit, he finally began to warm." I was exhausted and wanted to
sleep . . but was afraid I'd never wake up again," he said.

Meanwhile, the three other F-15E crews, incredibly had managed to
pinpoint the crash site [within two miles] based on his last radio
communications. The Coast Guard was on the way.

Udell spent four hours in the night water before a Coast Guard
helicopter found him. Even though his bulging lips could barely form
the syllables, Udell kept hollering out to the empty sea for his
flightmate: " DENNNNNNISSS ! " ...
No answer. He also thought of his wife, Kristi who was four months
pregnant with their first child.

Using an emergency radio, he directed the Coast Guard helicopter to
his location. " Because I didn't want the rotor wash to knock me out
of the raft, I asked them not to (hover) too close," he said. Aviation
Survivalman Jim Peterson fished Udell out of the raft and fastened him
into a litter. "He was in a lot of pain, but he just bit his lip and
dealt with it," Peterson said. "I even accidently bumped his legs a
few times, but he never complained. Considering
that he was all busted up . . he was a very strong man." Later, Udell
admitted, he was so weakened by his exertion in the cold water he'd
had difficulty pushing down the emergency radio button.

And now cold struck again. " When he [Peterson] secured me in the
litter, the helicopter flew overhead and lowered its winch, its rotors
kicked up the wind and waves, and spray that felt like steel needles
were hitting me and also created an effective air conditioner, giving
me another big chill. However, I finally got pulled aboard, so I owe
those guys a lot."

Once in the helicopter, the Coast Guard rescue crew rushed the downed
pilot to the nearest hospital. " When I arrived at the hospital, it
seemed like 20 or 30 doctors and female nurses surrounded me," Udell
said. " Within seconds I was buck naked, and all I could think about
was that good ol' mom advice : ' Brian, make sure you have clean
underwear on because you never know when you'll
be in an accident.' "

Soon an orthopedic surgeon walks in. He looks at the X-ray. "Right
knee dislocated. Left ankle broken. Left arm dislocated," the doctor
said. "I'm thinking, 'All right, pain medication,' " Udell said
wistfully. "But without a hi, hello or how are you, that doctor walks
up to me, grabs my right knee, and POP ! He snaps it back into place.
I start screaming. Then he goes to my left ankle, POP ! I'm screaming
even louder. Then he takes my left arm , POP ! " Doctors finally
administered morphine, and he slipped into a happy place.

Kristi Udell arrived in the hospital emergency room just as her
husband began wailing in anguish. The doctor explained to her what was
happening. "When I saw him, he looked vaguely familiar," Kristi said,
shuddering at the thought. "His face was puffed up to the size of a
basketball, and he had a gash that went across his eye." "How do I
look?" he asked. "Great," she lied. In addition to his mangled face
and broken and dislocated limbs .. he had a gash across his chest ..
broken rib ..the back of his right thigh also had been slashed open ..
both arms were a grotesque black and blue .. and various other
scrapes, cuts and bruises maligned his body.

But he was alive.

During his first few hours in the hospital, the Udells found out White
hadn't been so lucky. The violent force of the ejection killed him
instantly. Still choking up at the memory, Udell said,"That was a
depressing time for me. I'd held up pretty good until then. But when I
found out he was dead, I just lost it. Dennis had left a wife and two
kids."

Doctors gave Udell additional morphine to help him sleep.
Unfortunately, the drug caused him to dream. " I dreamt someone jumped
on my leg, and the thought made me jerk and I popped my left knee
popped back out of its socket." Because his leg was already in a cast,
it wasn't until three days later that doctors found the knee
dislocated once again. " My kneecap was swollen to the size
of a cantaloupe and laid over to the side kind of funny," Udell said.
His tendons and ligaments had been torn apart, so nothing held his
knee in place. It snapped out of joint three more times before they
managed to cast it again. After the swelling went down, two titanium
rods had to be temporarily inserted into the knee to help hold it in
place and keep it immobilized.

After four surgeries and with six stainless steel screws in each leg,
Udell began intensive physical therapy and his trek to walk . . and
maybe even fly again. Nearly two months after the accident, he took
his first step.

"I didn't want to just lie around," Udell said. " I'd get in my
wheelchair and wheel myself down to physical therapy every morning and
work out for about an hour. Then I'd do the same thing in the
afternoon. By the time I wheeled myself back to my hospital room that
evening, I was exhausted and would go right to sleep." For months,
Udell increased his rehabilitation workouts until he was riding a
bike, lifting weights, doing water exercises and other various
muscle-building routines eight to ten hours each day. By the sixth
month, he felt he was ready to fly again .. it was something nobody
had thought possible.

"Some people get depressed when going through the slow rehabilitation
process," said Kriquette Alexander, senior program director where
Udell performed much of his rehab. "But Brian was an inspiration to
everyone. He pushed himself. And was very focused. He's a cool
critter."

Even after so much progress, a skeptical medical board still had to be
convinced that he was ready to fly again. "They took me and a
'healthy' guy out to an airplane to demonstrate an emergency ground
egress out of the aircraft," Udell said smugly. "We had to pretend the
aircraft was on fire .. unstrap .. jump overboard .. and run 50 yards
away. They timed us both. I beat the other guy by 10 seconds."

Ten months after the injury, after going through a battery of tests
and getting waivers for the metal screws he'd carry for the rest of
his life, Udell flew again. On his second flight, he soared back over
the same area where he crashed. "I was just so excited to get back in
the cockpit, I didn't have time to get scared," said Udell, whose
father, retired Air Force Colonel Maurice Udell, taught him to fly
when he was 9. "I just love to fly. It's all I ever wanted to do."

Although Brian is back in the cockpit, he still has to go through
stringent medical exams each year to stay on flying status. That's
because the injuries to his limbs make him highly susceptible to
degenerative arthritis. But for Udell, who had graduated at the top of
his undergraduate pilot training class and had a strong resume package
into the Thunderbirds before the crash, flying is no longer the number
one priority in his life. He said, " When I clung onto that raft for
dear life, I wasn't thinking about flying or drinking beer with my
buddies. I prayed to God that he would let me see my wife again, and
be there when my child was born."

His first son was born while he labored through rehabilitation. In the
hospital room during his first son's birth, the baby's head just made
its way out into this world when he opened his eyes and looked up at
his father. Brian's eyes welled up with tears . . it was God's answer
to one of Udell's desperate prayers.

[From the "FIGHTER PILOT" email list.]

Third party, "I heard of" stories don't show a lot of conviction,
Tony, sorry. Please, if you have it, quotable text or links or even
the possibility that the SR-71 pilot wrote a paper on it? That would
be nice, maybe more convincing, thanks.

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 21:35:42 -0600, "Tony" wrote:

"Bill McClain" wrote in message
. com...
My son was asking me about ejecting from jet aircraft. He's 8, and
he's convinced that no matter how fast an airplane is going, it's
possible to eject. I said I didn't think that the guy who was flying
the MiG-25 at Mach 3+ was able to eject from his aircraft with the
runaway engines (if that's what was happening), and that the SR-71
isn't really something you can safely eject from at max speed and
altitude. Any knowledgeable remarks I can pass along to him?

I attended a talk by an SR-71 pilot a little while back and,
according to him, people have safely ejected from an SR-71
at speed and altitude.

Tony

In article rckSb.4580$EW.3195@okepread02, Tony wrote:
"Bill McClain" wrote in message
My son was asking me about ejecting from jet aircraft. He's 8, and
he's convinced that no matter how fast an airplane is going, it's
possible to eject. I said I didn't think that the guy who was flying
the MiG-25 at Mach 3+ was able to eject from his aircraft with the
runaway engines (if that's what was happening), and that the SR-71
isn't really something you can safely eject from at max speed and
altitude. Any knowledgeable remarks I can pass along to him?

I attended a talk by an SR-71 pilot a little while back and,
according to him, people have safely ejected from an SR-71
at speed and altitude.

The odds aren't good, despite the lower dynamic pressure at
the Blackbird's cruising altitude.

The first fatal accident was the loss of the #3 SR, which involved
a pitch-up at speed. The forebody broke off and tumbled. Pilot
Bill Weaver stated that he lost consciousness immediately. I
didn't read the accident report in enough detail to know whether
his seat belt snapped or whether the skin blowing off the forebody
took the ground rescue handle, which anvils the seat belts.
Weaver told an interviewer years later that he thought that the
bruise across his waist was from hitting the edge of the windscreen
on his way out. He did not fire his seat.

The RSO, Jim Zwayer, died of a broken neck. The accident report
noted that if he had been in a head-down position pulling
positive g's when he fired the seat, then the combined acceleration
could have been 30 g's.


The other breakup at speed with a survivor was the mid-air of
MD-21 #135 and a D-21 drone it had just launched. Pilot Bill Park
reported that the forbody tumbled repeatedly and he pulled heavy
positive and negative g's, possible six each way. He ejected
when his seat belt loosened to the point where his helmet began
to hit the inside of the canopy on the negative g's. Getting
into his raft was much more difficult than he'd expected and
he barely made it on the third try.

Launch control officer Ray Torick also ejected, but was found
drowned, tethered to his life raft, but submerged. The air
connector was torn and his suit flooded. It's unknown whether
he was conscious when he hit the water. Park mentions the
possibility of a broken arm, but I haven't seen the accident
report, so I don't know.


An A-12 may have been lost at speed, but no trace was ever
found of the aircraft or the pilot, Jack Weeks. Low bandwidth
telemetry indicated a fuel flow problem and that the aircraft
had descended below 65,000', if I recall correctly.

In article , fudog50
wrote:

Third party, "I heard of" stories don't show a lot of conviction,
Tony, sorry. Please, if you have it, quotable text or links or even
the possibility that the SR-71 pilot wrote a paper on it? That would
be nice, maybe more convincing, thanks.

You can find the story in Ben Rich's "Skunk Works". The accident
occured during tests designed to launch a drone from an A-12. I
don't have my copy handy, but I recall it happened at Mach3 and about
75,000 feet.

When released, the drone impacted the tail fin of the aircraft, causing
immediate loss of control. The crew punched out. Both of the crew
survived the ejection and descent, however one drowned due to a hole in
his pressure suit.

Kelly Johnson was devestated by the loss of life, and the A-12/drone
program was cancelled.

This accident, and other supersonic ejections from the Blackbird, are
documented he

http://digilander.libero.it/maddog666/serie.htm

- James

(Bill McClain) wrote in message . com...
My son was asking me about ejecting from jet aircraft. He's 8, and
he's convinced that no matter how fast an airplane is going, it's
possible to eject. I said I didn't think that the guy who was flying
the MiG-25 at Mach 3+ was able to eject from his aircraft with the
runaway engines (if that's what was happening), and that the SR-71
isn't really something you can safely eject from at max speed and
altitude. Any knowledgeable remarks I can pass along to him?

Check out this site:
http://users.bestweb.net/~kcoyne/index.html

Hi Bill & son

It can be done.

Aircraft such as the B-58 used a seat that had a clamshell capsule that
enclosed the occupant. The soviet (now Russian) K-36 seat uses booms in
front to make a calm area. Think of the wake on a boat. There is a
relatively calm area behind.

Having the occupant survive without injury is another story. Others
responders have already discussed this.

Shameless plug - visit my web site at
http://showcase.netins.net/web/herke...ion/eject.html

Great to see a young person asking quesitons.

MAH