Fully 94% of the Navy's pilots who have to bail out below 1,000 ft. during landings and take-offs are killed because they do not have time to get out of their planes and open their parachutes. Last week the Navy gave a spectacular demonstration of a British ejection seat that may become the American carrier pilot's best friend: even at minimum altitudes the seat automatically ejects the pilot and opens his chute.
Whistling at 140 m.p.h. down a runway at the U.S. Naval Air Test Center on Maryland's Patuxent River, a Grumman F9F-8T fighter-trainer barely had its nose wheel off the concrete...
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