The seat is ejected by rocket force and the rocket force downwards is countered by the upward movement of the pilot in their seat. Comparing the force to lift a pilot and his seat with the force needed to pitch an aircraft the size of a C-130 hercules up I’d say the pilot of the An-12 might have felt a little push, but hardly earth shattering stuff. I would expect dropping up to 20 tons out the back during a para drop would be more disconcerting and they do that quite a bit.

BTW nice pics Zhukov121… the other advantage of the setup is that you can pack all sorts of telemetry equipment into an AN-12 that you can’t fit into a two seat fighter. The only problems are top speed and top altitude… but you can use Mig-25s and Mig-31s for those tests.

Also, look at the vents in the bottom of the rig, and consider how man-portable rocket fires without knocking the firer on his back – the exhaust and the projectile have the same force and cancel each other out. As Garry says in this case no doubt the pilot would experience some change in pitch, but no more than say, the Martin-Baker Meteor pilot, who had/has to cope with the whole force of the ejection (unless that has some recoil-damping/vent system as well).

Beautiful as always. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of fabricating a slipper tank for a Spitfire…that really would be a bit different. There must be plans somewhere for one.

Failing that, there’s an intact real one in storage at Duxford.

There’s a two-seat variant of the Frogfoot, so it’s reasonable to assume that an example of this was being used for ejection tests.

I may be wrong, but I see the F-117 as a sort of operational proof-of-concept, with a limited useful time in service even compared to other specialised airframes like the Tomcat. Unlike the latter, you can’t readily make the 117 multi-role to any meaningful extent. It can’t do air defence or CAS, whereas the Tomcat could make itself useful as a tactical strike aircraft and reconnaissance platform.

Nonetheless, valuable lessons in reducing RCS and delivering guided ordnance have been learned thanks to it, and have fed into the technology incorporated into the F-22, 35, and upgraded “legacy” airframes like the F/A-18E/F. The US taxpayer has probably got their money’s worth.

I suspect that in the current “climate” most airframes will end up in operational storage.

Thanks James (and my apologies for not getting a copy of HT to you as I promsied – there’s only one in my whole organisation and I just couldn’t lay hands on it!). Exactly the sort of clarification of intent that was needed. It’s a little like the recent “future evolution” story that all the papers ran with as “what scientists say we’ll all look like in a 1000 years”. In fact, the guy that theorised was NOT an evolutionary biologist, and was being paid by a men’s magazine to speculate on future evolutionary pressures.

The same sort of misrepresentation and bandwagon jumping, followed by indignant protestation (understandable to a degree), occurred with this story. The media think that the public won’t understand the subtleties, so they extrapolate their own simplistic conclusions and run with them.

Pretty sure the Concorde went into AirSpace sideways using skates as well.

Must….resist….!

Careful Frank, I can see waving pitchforks and flaming brands on the horizon…