Explained: How Ejection Seat Works?

Which manufacturer's ejection seat is installed in your favorite fighter plane that deployed in the Indian Airforce? If you do not know then Don't worry, I will tell you below.But don't you also learn how the ejection seat works? You need to know this because this is the technology that has saved thousands of brave soldiers as well as trained pilots. But before that, you should pay tribute to the inventor who invented it. And for that, you need to know What Is An Ejection Seat? An ejection seat Or an Ejector seat is a safety system designed to rescue the pilot or other crew of an aircraft and to eject and land safely in an emergency. A Romanian inventor Anastase Dragomir designed the modern layout of the ejection seat in the late 1920s. It is using compressed air to eject from aircraft. This design was proven during World War II because, At the same time, Henkel and SAAB developed the first ejection seats independently. Helmut Schenk became the first person to escape from a stricken aircraft with an ejection seat on 13 January 1942. In 1943 Bofors developed a gunpowder-based ejection seat and tested it for the Saab 21 aircraft. After 1 year in 1944, Heinkel He 162A Spatz (German aircraft) featured a new type of ejection seat. This time an explosive cartridge was fired to eject. Cartridges, basically the same as shotgun shells, were placed under the pipe, facing upwards. After firing cartridges, the gases create pressure in the duct, which pushes the seat outwards. Rocket Motor based Ejection Seat After World War II, the need for ejector seats became pressurized as aircraft speeds were steadily increasing, and the sound barrier was close to breaking. And manual escape would be impossible at such high speed. And rocket motors were being used in ejection seats and the solid propellant was used to generate thrust, In the early days. As a result, a solid propellant motor could not propel the ejector seat up to the height of the aircraft's tail. Also, due to the high speed, the hatch mounted above the cockpit does not open easily. And thus, this method proved insufficient to get the pilot enough extraction of the airframe. The amount of propellant was increased to solve this problem, but this increased the chances of pilot spinal injuries. So, the experiments with liquid propulsion-based rocket motors began. In 1958, the Convair F-102 delta dagger fitted with a rocket-propellant seat as the first aircraft. Martin-Baker developed this design with multiple rocket motors, which are fed with a single nozzle. In this configuration greater thrust generates than a single motor. The advantage of this is that the pilot ejects and reaches a safe height, even if it is very close to the ground. As you know, a parachute requires a minimum height to open, and this minimum height is a safe height for ejection. And in this way, After doing many improvements in these seats, today we have reached zero-zero ejector seats. Read Also :- Explained: How Swathi Radar System Works? So now we know that How Does Ejection Seat Work? The ejection seat of Each fighter jet works in 2 stages - 1. Ejection From Aircraft In this stage, The pilot ejects from the Aircraft, According to the name. In all modern aircraft we use a Zero-zero ejector seat. Before Zero-zero ejection seats if you eject from an Aircraft it will give you a projectile motion in the aircraft motion direction so the chance of collision from any mountain or drowning in any water body is increased. On the other hand, A zero-zero ejection seat is developed to safely eject upward and land its pilot from a grounded stationary position (i.e., zero altitude and zero airspeeds), specifically from aircraft cockpits. It means you have more control when you land with the parachute. For example, A pilot ejects himself on the coordinate 43°, 35°, 12° (x, y, z), so he will automatically land at the exact location. The zero-zero capacity was designed to help aircrews escape upward from unrecoverable emergencies during low-altitude, low-speed, or both conditions flights, as well as ground accidents. In today's aircraft, the Pilot pulls the ejection handle that is equipped in front of him and the rocket generates thrust to extract him from the aircraft. The hatch mounted above the cockpit does open and the pilot comes outside from the aircraft. 2. Land Through Parachute After that, the parachute opens, and the pilot/crew land safely. Modern zero-zero technology uses small rockets to propel the seat upward to enough altitude and a small explosive charge to open the parachute canopy for a successful parachute landing so that the right deployment of the parachute no longer depends on airspeed and altitude. How Does A Pilot Take Breath After Ejection Very High Altitude? Already in training, the pilot is instructed to eject only in any emergency situation as there is a risk of spinal injury even in modern ejection seats. After an accident on 30 July 1966 in the attempted launch of a D-21 drone, two Lockheed M-21 crew members ejected at Mach 3.25 at an altitude of 80,000 ft (24,000 m). The pilot was rescued successfully, but the launch control officer drowned after a water landing. Despite these records, most ejections happen at appropriately low speeds and altitudes, when the pilot can see that there is no hope of regaining jet control before crashing with the land. But if you have an emergency and you have passed out of a fighter jet above a very high altitude, how will you breathe now? Look at this image carefully, the pilot's mask is plugged in through a tube, and this plug connects to the ejection seat's jack.Oxygen flows from this jack to the pilot's mask. The ejection seat connects to the oxygen cylinder mounted on the fighter jet. An additional oxygen bottle is mounted on the ejection seat also. This oxygen bottle is used for inhalation when pilots are out at very high altitudes. When the pilot enters the Earth's atmosphere, this ejection seat and the bottle in it are all separated and the pilot lands alone. Oxygen jack of ejection seat Ejection Seat In Indian Airforce Fighter Jets These fighter jets are used in the Indian Airforce and are the seat model with the company name - Fighter AircraftName of Seat ModelCountry of Origin & Company nameDassault RafaleMartin-Baker Mk.16UK (Martin Baker)LCA TejasMartin-Baker Mk.16UK (Martin Baker)SEPECAT JaguarMartin-Baker Mk.10UK (Martin Baker)Mirage 2000Martin-Baker Mk.4UK (Martin Baker)MiG -29Zvezda K-36DMRussia (NPP Zvezda)MiG -21SK-1 ejection seatRussia (NPP Zvezda)Su-30 MKINPP Zvezda K-36DMRussia (NPP Zvezda)Ejection Seat of Indian Airforce's Fighter jets