AIR SHOW SPECTATOR WHO TRIED IT...AND NEARLY DIED

ASKED to demonstrate its new ejection seat in public at a Battle of Britain air display at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire on September 20, 1947, the dream team of pilot Jack Scott and guinea pig Benny Lynch took to the skies once again.

But when Lynch was given the signal to leave the aircraft, nothing happened.

The ejection gun failed to fire and they had no choice but to return to the airfield where a minor adjustment rapidly fixed it.

Aware several thousand spectators were feeling short-changed, Scott asked Lynch if he fancied going up again. But for once Benny’s legendary courage and good humour deserted him.

Then, in a truly astonishing turn of events, “Mr Keyes”, an air show spectator, rushed out of the crowd to volunteer. Bafflingly, the company’s on-site engineer gave Keyes, an untrained civilian, the nod to try out the ejection seat.

Scott briefed the excited Keyes on the procedure and, at 4,500 feet, gave him the green light to eject. Initially, everything went as it should have done. His passenger pulled the ejection handle and shot out of the aircraft, then jettisoned his seat.

But as Keyes had ejected, his goggles had blown off. Having extremely poor eyesight, he could barely see beyond his own nose and only pulled his ripcord when the green blur of the airfield swam into view.

His canopy opened just as he bulleted into the ground in front of the horrified crowd. Keyes lay unconscious in hospital for three days.

Though comprehensively battered and bruised, amazingly he had not broken any bones.

When he woke up, James Martin was probably the most relieved man in Britain.