Luftwaffe pilot sparked the invention of ejector seats
Some ejector seats are known as backbreakers
AS human guinea pigs go, Helmut Schenk was right up there.
It was on January 13, 1942, that the German test pilot successfully used an ejector seat to be fired out of his Heinkel He 280 jet fighter.
The plane was being developed for the Luftwaffe, and Schenk was proud to be selected as the man to try it out.
Its success meant ejector seats would become another technological breakthrough by Nazi engineers, one of many.
The He 280 itself never went into service, however, as the feared Messerschmitt Me 262 pipped it to become the first operational jet-powered fighter plane.
Just nine He 280s were built, capable of doing 512mph, and with cannons powerful enough to have created havoc for Allied bombers.
In the modern era, ejector seats are usually rocket-propelled, but Schenk’s was powered by compressed air.
Even today, many pilots are seriously hurt or killed by the violence of being blasted out of an aeroplane, so you can appreciate the courage of the man, if not the reasons behind him trying to help the Nazi cause.
Some ejector seats today are known to pilots as “backbreakers”, so clearly being ejected is not something they look forward to with any enthusiasm.
Other attempts at doing this during the Second World War involved gadgets almost like large elastic bands, and the safety of the test pilots was anything but paramount.
Nowadays, the safety of the pilot is the most-important aspect of these seats.
Compression fractures of vertebrae, however, are still a common side-effect of ejection.
Incredibly, some pilots have even managed to eject from aeroplanes after they hit water and sank to the bottom, while one company which makes the seats runs a group called the Ejection Club, presenting a tie and lapel pin to every pilot who has ejected safely from a plane.
The Kamov Ka-50, first used by the Russians in 1995, was the very first helicopter to feature an ejection seat – you may think being ejected into whirling rotor blades would not be much of an escape, but these machines were fitted with a system that would jettison the blades with explosive bolts, as soon as the seat was fired.
Schenk had been forced to use his ejecton seat when his plane’s control surface iced up and became unuseable.
Just 26 years later, astronaut Neil Armstrong ejected from the Lunar Lander Research Vehicle in 1968.