Punching Out: Stories of High-Speed Ejections

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Overview

Punching Out features a unique collection of firsthand stories of the rare individuals who have been baptized by rocket fire, pushed beyond the edge of endurance, and experienced face-to-face encounters with their own mortality. These are the pilots who have survived high-speed ejections and lived to tell their stories to a new generation. Except for aerospace technical research, manuals, and periodicals, this is intended to represent the first major body of work on this subject from an experiential perspective. Many of the pilots whose stories are contained here are among the most famous names in the history of aviation. But for each, on that fateful day, fame was of no use. Their lives hung in the balance...from long silk parachute lines.

Preceding these awe-inspiring stories of ejection survivors are various pages taken from the past: pilots who bailed out and survived, before there were ejection seats. It is their sacrifices, and their experiences, which has led to future generations who can count on this life-saving equipment in that instant of stark terror and confusion known as punching out.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Compiled by Air Force veteran and broadcast journalist Cross, and with a rousing foreword by Voyager Commander and three-time ejectee Dick Rhutan ("Sometimes, gravity doesn't work."), this adrenalin-fueled anthology of more than 50 first-hand accounts of high-speed ejections told from the perspective of the surviving test pilots, fighter pilots, air show fliers, and war veterans—both before and after the invention of ejection seats—is fascinating and shocking. Relayed with book-gripping tension and surprising detail, each near-death experience is more terrifying than the last, from LT. Sean Brennan's fight for life after he's seriously burned in a two-man bail out; to CDR. Wynn Foster's frenzied attempts to save a dying aircraft after his right arm is severed by a 57mm shell tearing through his cockpit in Vietnam; to LT. Keith Gallagher's unintentional daredevil stunt—straddling a still-airborne A-6 during a botched routine exercise; to Gen. Chuck Yeager's infamous "punchout" after his aircraft—the first fighter to break the sound barrier in a climb—freefalls into an irrevocable tailspin. Military and aviation buffs will relish the post-op analysis, and helpful translations of military jargon like "IROK" help make this accessible for novices. Photos. (Apr.)

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780312383152
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication date: 4/26/2011
Edition description: First Edition
Edition number: 1
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 828,734
Product dimensions: 5.36 (w) x 8.24 (h) x 0.89 (d)

Meet the Author

James Cross is an Air Force veteran who has worked as a broadcast journalist and independent producer since starting at PBS in 1978, going on to produce the first-ever series on test pilots for the Discovery Channel/TLC and also programs for The History Channel, Dateline NBC, MTV, PBS, and many more.

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1ST LT. JOHN BAILEY—1957

In 1957, I was a first lieutenant in the USAF going through Advanced Interceptor Training at Perrin AFB, Sherman, Texas, after earning my wings in September 1956. I had about nine hours in the F-86D at the time, and the curriculum called for one flight dedicated to aerial acrobatics—this flight was it. It was a clear March day, warm and blue.

It was my second flight that day and I was probably a little fatigued. Over the practice area, above Oklahoma, I got off a few rolls and then tried a loop. I dove into the loop at perhaps 400mph, began pulling up but not aggressively enough. The plane stalled at the top of the loop—upside down! The plane began violently shaking and turning. I had incorrectly been using trim to keep my controls neutral, something my flight instructor in basic training should never have taught me.

The plane was totally out of control, shaking and spinning violently, and I was upside down. I realized that I could never recenter the controls using my trim tabs, and that I was falling faster than I had time to recover. So I decided to eject. I managed to pull myself up into the seat snugly enough that the explosive launch of the ejection seat did not ram into my spine. I left the plane, seat and all. Chute deployment was textbook, meaning I later had black bruises across the inside of my thighs; at the time, though, I didn’t feel a thing. I even smoked a cigarette on the way down. Based on time of descent, I think I must have ejected at ten thousand feet. I later learned the plane crashed in a pasture, panicking a horse that had to be destroyed.

My parachute landing was uneventful. The slightly rolling terrain was covered with light scrub and thin saplings. I nervously kept my ankles overlapped to hopefully avoid straddling a limb. As it happened, it was a relatively gentle touchdown with a textbook roll to break the fall. After wading through a deep creek, I got to a road and hailed a passing school bus full of third- to sixth-graders who giggled and stared. The school bus took me to the first farm that had a telephone. The owners raised Pekingese dogs. I had never seen so many Pekingese. Calling from there, a rescue team picked me up and I returned to the base. There was a routine accident inquiry and after analysis of the wreckage, Flight Safety Magazine ran an article about the accident, with disguised participants to protect the innocent. The article warned against the habit of routinely using the trim tabs to keep flight control pressures neutral, especially during violent maneuvers.

Except for a bitter complaint from one of the flight instructors who claimed I destroyed his favorite airplane—the one with the best radar set—I had almost no comment about losing a Sabre Jet. I got more grief because of my erratic formation flying.

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Punching Out: Stories of High-Speed Ejections

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