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Comment by marcodiego | Hacker News Reader

Ejecting from a fighter plane is not only dangerous. It is relatively common that people who eject develop spinal injuries because of it.

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There are other problems. My Dad had an engine fire in his RAF Vampire over East England, didn't have an ejector seat, and decided it would be better to belly-land the thing, which he did, succesfully, in a cabbage field.

He got out of the Vampire and trudged over to an old yokel who had been sitting watching all this.

Dad: Is there a phone around here?

Yokel: You'm will be paying for all them cabbages?

Hmm. Was the farmer compensated?

No idea. I'm not sure he should have been, but he very probably was - but my Dad was risking his life to protect the farmer, so Dad would not have paid for it. And as far as I know people were compensated for RAF crashes on their property - they certainly are now today, though RAF pilots do everything they can (up to their own deaths) to avoid militraliry accidents.

How was he risking his life to protect the farmer?

> I'm not sure he should have been, but he very probably was - but my Dad was risking his life to protect the farmer

Why not? It's not your father who should compensate the farmer but the government. And if government property causes damages to a citizen's livelihood, then the government should compensate them. At least, in a civilized democracy.

And that's happens in the UK. Of course, the farmer has to put in a claim, and I mean't that I do not know if he did so.

Hence:

> but he very probably was

I think you're missing a comma:

> I'm not sure he should have been

> I'm not sure, he should have been

Otherwise it reads like you think he shouldn't have been compensated.

> my Dad was risking his life to protect the farmer

The farmer is an equal citizen with equal rights, regardless - that is what the pilot was protecting.

This is supposedly where the idiom "bought the farm" comes from.

I don't think so. It came from the life insurance paying off the family farm (if I understand correctly).

Closer to "not in my backyard", until and unless it absolutely and directly benefits ME

A reaction like that implies that the farmer was screwed over in a previous incident or has heard of someone that was.

Or, more likely, perhaps he just has a typically dry British sense of humor.

A lot of people sure don't get British humour, with a 'u'.

Hence the old term "bought the farm" for a crash landing.

Fascinating, I always thought this referenced retiring on a farm.

Close. The term originates from payments the War Department (now DoD) made to families after someone died in combat. In some cases the payment was enough for the family to pay off the mortgage, so the dead person was said to have "bought the farm."

Exact origin is obscure. Some think it relates to paying a farmer, some that it refers to a death benefit.

Meanwhile, in Soviet Russia:

"For improved pilot survivability the Ka-50 is fitted with a NPP Zvezda K-37-800 ejection seat, which is a rare feature for a helicopter."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov_Ka-50

Yes, ok, it has explosives to blow away the rotors. But how many different ways could that go wrong...

There was a single successful ejection in Ukraine so far

Well, you'd (theoretically) only do it when not doing it would be worse. So all those ways it could go wrong won't kill you, because you were already going to die. But if it all works, you might live.

What if the rotor destruct system fired when you weren't ejecting tho?

I can't find the specific incident easily by Googling, but I read a long time ago about an incident, possibly with F-16s, a training exercise where suddenly a sidewinder fired uncommanded, and took out another plane.

You would think that would surely be human error, but investigation showed that apparently something just shorted out.

Well, if it takes off the rotor, hopefully it also ejects you. If it doesn't, well, you should probably promptly initiate ejection. And the ejection should be easier, since there's now no pesky rotor in the way...

Attack helicopters are designed to be survivable even in very rough landings, so it's not actually obvious that a risky ejection mechanism is going to increase your chances to survival in all instances.

>Meanwhile, in Soviet Russia:

There are videos on Youtube with captured Russian pilots who ejected their aircrafts in the recent Ruso-Ukrainian war and they all had pretty big gashes on their necks and their overalls soaked in blood from all that bleeding like a stuck pig.

Apparently the canopy and ejection system acts like a guillotine on Russian aircrafts, but that's just what I've heard, I'm no expert on soviet era ejection seats, so if anyone has more info on this would love to learn more.

Perhaps the canopy is supposed to be jettisoned, but the system is designed to send people right through it if that doesn't work.

Wouldn't being blasted through the canopy be bad for the pilot's health?

So's the out of control aircraft!

Fair point

Well, you can have a pointy helmet or something intended to break through when all else fails. I don't remember the details, but I remember reading about something like that, on some aircraft.

There is a scene from the James Bond movie Goldeneye where this is show (although probably not realistically)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vln5TaRt5LU

This is my question. It's not unusual to be quite injured after an ejection - spinal injuries, wind blast injuries, parts from the canopy hitting you, hard landing.

It's not uncommon for 20-something military pilots to be retired from flying after an ejection. Or at least on medical leave for a year or more.

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