Several alert readers have sent along the link to a DEW Line post purporting to show a Flanker back-seater ejecting at Mach 2.0 as a movie stunt:
Here’s how it goes: A Russian movie company hires two Sukhoi pilots to film a couple of stunts. The pilots agree to take off without a canopy.
Apparently following a plot-twist in the film, the back-seat pilot ejects from the aircraft while the front-seater keeps flying.
(As a friend of mine notes: “Why use dummies when you can use real Russian pilots? Those guys are amazing.” )
The front-seater later claims he flew beyond Mach 2.0 … with an open canopy!
The Russians make great ejection seats. Some of them even have paddle-like devices between the pilot’s legs to flip up during ejection at very high speeds to disrupt the airflow, which would otherwise flail a pilot to death. But surviving a Mach 2 ejection simply denies the laws of physics, at least as I understand them.
In the source photos, the stabilators in the Flanker photo show what has to be close to a full nose-down pitch setting as well. Meanwhile, the vertical tails in the ejection photo are clipped, while the other photos show horizontal tops. Finally, there’s something strange about the canards forward of the wing’s leading edge root that I can’t quite put my finger on.
I’m guessing Photoshop, shot from the deck on an aircraft undergoing maintenance. The landing gear removed and the ejection airbrushed in.
Update: Courtesy of the occasional reader ASM826, an explanation of the droopy stabilators.
I have no doubt those crazy Ruskies took that bird up for a hop w/o a canopy just to shoot a movie. They are strapped for cash, and therefore flight time, and if someone else is going to foot the bill for the go-juice, all the better. But that ejection was obviously photoshopped in that picture. The plane in the ejection shot has different vert stabs, as Lex pointed out, and I think it has a different weapons loadout on the wings from all the other pictures. Hard to tell. I don’t think the story claims a Mach 2 ejection, just that he stuck his fingers out at Mach 2 to warm them up.
I don’t know everything about aerodynamics, but I call BS on Mach 2 without the canopy.
I would think that in a world that contains the RAF; Amee D’leAir; Luftwaffe; FAA; USAF; PLAAF; ROKAF; JASDF, and USNAVAIR, that making good ejection seats would be a prioity.
Where is Col John Stapp when we need him?
I’ll leave the Mach 2 / no canopy question to the pilots / engineers among you. But I do have a question: If the Russians have such a stellar ejection seat, why don’t our planes use something similar or copied from them?? I’ve heard about the Russian seats for long enough now that we have to know all about their seats but, apparently, we don’t want to upgrade???
2xSU-27s for sale in Illinois: http://tiny.cc/RljNE
‘One for the money, two for the show…’
No price in the article, but the comments are a hoot!
Agree – the photo is definitely PS’d.
As for an ejection above Mach, there’s an interesting read by a former SR-71 pilot at http://www.thedigitalaviator.com. Haven’t had time to check the validity of the story, but it reads very well and rings true. Can anyone verify it?
Didn’t happen unless they have figured out how to load missiles onto the aircraft in midair… look at the belly stations. As our host pointed out, the vert stabs are a little different, but the whole “fire two missiles/jettison the rails/load new rails and missiles in air” bit is more than I can swallow. As for the flight with canopy removed, those pics look real enough.
I’m hosed! I believed it and forwarded it.
Now thatcha mention it, does it look bad. Time for a glass of cold vodka and ice as punishment.
Speaking of the Flanker:
http://www.wrex.com/Global/story.asp?S=10788515
The F-22 will also be there…first time for that.
My issue is with the text that accompanies the pictures. It says the pilot “Frolov” is getting ready to get into the plane while on the guy’s helmet it is written in LARGE letters “Kedrov”… The ejection pic looks photoshopped even to me but the rest of the no-canopy pictures look real…
That’s a definite PS. Or BS if you will. Take a look at the smoke from the seat. At ANY flying speed, there would be a smoke trail beyond the tail of the aircraft by that point.
I personally know two Naval Aviators(1 Marine/1 Navy) who shelled out of jets at 500+ KIAS, both barely lived to tell about it much less remember what happened. 1 is back in the jet and the other NPQ’d because he can no longer do pull ups and pass a PFT(go figure – I can hardly do a pull up and pass a PFT yet I’m still flying). I call foul!
bdger
I recall a story (maybe anecdotal) about an SNA that punched out at 0 knots and -22 ft MSL in P’cola Bay when I was in the VTs. I think he had the lowest on record. Certainly easier on the bod than 500 kts where the flail injury risk factor is 1.0. Don’t ya know they had to think “this is really going to f’ing hurt”.
Mach 2 ejection? Yeah, and I’m Skippy the Wonder Horse.
It would be a little bit more believable if any of the in-flight photos actually showed the back seat in the airplane.
I think the ejection was photoshopped. The pic simply does not look real. If you look at the plane being prepared for flight (according to the caption) the ejection seat is missing. The ejection looks pasted around the edges. Theye didn’t do a bad job of it as in a film it would be past so fast you wouldn’t notice it anyway.
If the pilot shove the throttles forward enough to make Mach 2, it must not have felt good in the cockpit, not to mention the noise. I know how much wind I feel behind the fairing of my bike at 70, I can’t imagine what it would feel like at mach 2.
The Mach 2 ejection didn’t happen.
Lex,
Look at the shadows on the vertical stabs. The lighting is from the rear and above the horizon. It sharply outlines the port stab on the starboard one. Compare that with the sky in the background, the lighting does not match.
Additionally, when you start to blow up the image, the bird, the ejecting pilot, and the flames become pixilated much sooner than the background sky, indicating that the original resolutions are different.
Or they took it up with canopy off, did backseat only ejection and then went fast.