No pilot wants to pull the ejection seats, especially not at high speeds. The absolute worst is ejecting at supersonic speed. And this is what Captain Brian “Noodle” Udell had to do.
On April 18th, 1989, Udell and his weapons officer were assigned to fly their two-seat F-15 Eagle on a combat training mission. They, along with another F-15, would engage in mock dogfights. But during one particularly aggressive maneuver, his F-15 was out of control, he had to eject at 800 mph. It was a matter of seconds before the F-15 crashed, so Udell commanded a bail out. Udell and his navigator pulled the handles of their ejection seats.
He said: “People don’t understand what wind does to someone at that speed. It felt like somebody had just hit me with a train. My head was swollen to the size of a basketball, my lips were swollen to the size of cucumbers.”
He landed in the ocean with severe injuries, his body battered by the forces of supersonic ejection and the impact with the water. It took 4 long hours for the first search and rescue planes to find him. He survived ejection at over the speed of sound, but had to fight for his life for hours. His Navigator was however not so lucky.
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