Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military From: shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: US Fighter Designations Message-ID: <1990Aug14.033918.9208@cbnews.att.com> Date: 14 Aug 90 03:39:18 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 30 Approved: military@att.att.com From: Mary Shafer Phil Gustafson writes, apropos the F-104 Starfighter: One problem was its ejection system. Most modern fighters have "zero- altitude" ejection seats -- the ejection cannon shoots the pilot high enough that he can eject more or less safely while the plane is on the ground. This is handy for malfuntions on takeoff and approach. The F-104 ejection seat fired _down_, making this difficult. I've heard undocumented stories of desperate pilots in damaged, low-flying F-104's flipping inverted to eject upward, but not surviving. Yuck. Only briefly did the F-104 e-seat fire downward. (Long enough to kill Ivan Kinchloe, though.) They all fire upward and have since some time before the mid-60s. The reason for this downward firing was that the T-tail would cut the ejector in half at speed if he were ejected upward. When better seat rockets were developed, all Starfighters were converted. At the time that the Starfighter was introduced, zero-zero seats were not universal in other aircraft. We're talking the 50s here. -- Mary Shafer shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov ames!skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer NASA Ames Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA Of course I don't speak for NASA "A MiG at your six is better than no MiG at all"--Unknown US fighter pilot