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Various ejection seats. In aircraft, an ejection seat or ejector seat is a system designed to rescue the pilot or other crew of an aircraft (usually military) in an emergency. . In most designs, the seat is propelled out of the aircraft by an explosive charge or rocket motor, carrying the pilot with
Sir James Martin (11 September 1893 – 5 January 1981) was a British engineer who together with Captain Valentine Baker founded the Martin-Baker aircraft company which is now a leading producer of aircraft ejection seats.
The Martin-Baker Mk.1 is a British ejection seat designed and built by Martin-Baker. Developed in the late 1940s it was the first in the line of production Martin-Baker seats for military aircraft. Ground and air testing of earlier designs resulted in the first successful test ejection of a company employee in July 1946.
Bohlin worked on the seat belt for about a year, using skills in developing ejection seats for SAAB; he concentrated on keeping the driver safe in a car accident. After testing the three-point safety belt, he introduced his invention to the Volvo company in 1959 and received his first patent (number 3,043,625). [1]
The company concluded that an explosive-powered ejection seat was the best solution. In particular, Baker's death in 1942 during a test flight of the MB 3 affected Martin so much that pilot safety became his primary focus and led to the later reorganisation of the company to focus primarily on ejection seats. [13]
Martin-Baker seats have been fitted into over 200 fixed-wing and rotary types with the most recent being the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II programme. Martin-Baker claimed in 2022 that since the first live ejection test in 1945, [3] a total of 7,674 lives have been saved by the company's ejection seats. [4]
Anastase Dragomir (1896–1966) was a distinguished Romanian inventor, most famous for his "catapultable cockpit" patent (with Tănase Dobrescu) as an early form of ejection seat, although preceded by Everard Calthrop's 1916 compressed air ejection seat, and others.
For ease of maintenance the Mk.10 was designed with modular assemblies, avoiding the need to remove the whole seat from the aircraft for minor servicing tasks. [1] The first successful emergency use of a Mk.10 seat involved a Red Arrows BAE Hawk on 17 May 1980 after the aircraft struck the mast of a yacht moored offshore at Brighton. [2]