ARMY & NAVY: Chairborne Delivery

ARMY & NAVY

Zipping over Dayton’s Wright Field in a sleek, twin-boomed Black Widow night fighter, pilot J. W. McGuyrt reached for a new lever in his cluttered cockpit. He looked back at his passenger, and pulled. A telescopic gun tube exploded a 37-mm. charge and sent First Sergeant Lawrence Lambert, still strapped to his seat, whooshing upward out of the plane, 20 feet above the onrushing tail fins. Three seconds later a second explosion in the air snapped Lambert’s safety belt and ripped the seat away. A third blast automatically opened his chute. After that, it was just like any of Airman Lambert’s previous 58 jumps.

The success of the A.A.F.’s new pilot ejection seat would be welcome news to airmen who had long worried about bailing out of high-speed aircraft. But A.A.F. designers could not claim complete credit. The idea had been copied from a similar Luftwaffe gadget.