GRUMMAN PANTHER: Korean War Warrior
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 เม.ย. 2024
- The Grumman Panther was a happy accident of aircraft procurement, which resulted in one of the most durable and effective aircraft of the Korean War. Although not the most sophisticated or high performance aircraft of its era, nonetheless, its combination of Grumman toughness, ease of maintenance and heavy armament makes it one of the best combat aircraft of the Cold War. I hope this video does it justice.
Surprisingly, the Panther isn't terribly well covered compared to its better-known land-based contemporaries. Main Sources:
I used Navy Standard Aircraft Characteristics for the technical specifications of the various versions
Grumman Cats by Michael O'Leary is a useful foundation for the complete series of Grumman naval fighters
Grumman F9F Panther/Cougar: First Jet of the Grumman Cats by Brad Elward is probably the most comprehensive book on the aircraft and its successor
F9F Panther/ Cougar In Action contains good pictures and I imagine would be great if you were looking to make a model
F9F Panther Units Of the Korean War by Warren Thompson offers great stories of the type's service, at the expense of offering only a rudimentary assessment of the technical characteristics. It also has the upside of being recently in print and thus readily available.
I fell in love with the Panther after watching the 1954 movie "The Bridges at Toko-Ri"
Me too! What an amazing movie. STILL in my Top Ten Aviation movies list...
A terrific movie but from a flying standpoint, I think Men of the Fighting Lady was even better.
I still remember the line "where do we get such men" Now I ask where we can get such men for these times?
@@peterhessedal8539 Indeed and indeed Peter...
Yes, Sir! Me, as well!
My USN advanced jet training squadron was flying F9F-8 Cougars when I came aboard in early 1969. We flew both one and two-seat variants both still powered by centrifugal flow engines. They were built hell-for-stout which enabled them to keep flying despite the sometimes awful student landings. A couple of years later we transitioned to A-4s. I still have the Remove Before Flight pennant from the last Cougar we flew off. She wasn't coming back for it.
Built for hell? Thats Grumman iron works for you
I spent my childhood poring over books and memorizing technical data about all sorts of military vehicles. I was told to put that away because it's nerdy and it will never amount to anything. No sympathy, I'm fine, but it makes me happy to know that generations of girls and boys who like weird esoteric shit never have to feel alone anymore. Someone is more nerdy about a subject than them and there's a community of like minds. For all it's fault, bless the internet and bless you, thanks for the content.
U should play war thunder
You were not alone!
My life long dream is to basically have detailed blueprints for every single aircraft that was ever made from 1930 to 1990.
Not only to model them in 3d and have them in my favorite flight sim, but also to preserve history so we know exactly what these aircrafts look like and how they were built.
Also, scale modeling and CFD analysis 🤤
Hear hear - its nice when t'interweb isnt total shit populated by dickheads. I love this stuff.
That’s me with space launch vehicles lol 😂
I got buzzed by two Panther jets while walking on the path between the beach and the "Great Highway" in San Francisco in 1952 or '53. It was great! Pretty sure it was some fighter jocks flying their Panthers into Alameda NAS from a carrier returning from duty during the Korean War.
Another fine example of the "Grumman Iron Works" build philosophy, tough, reliable planes to bring their pilots home , even missing bits of wing, holes in the tail, even on fire !.
The spirit of WW2 Grumman Wildcat and Hellcats were strong here . !
"Grumman Ironworks". I like that, never heard it before. Noted for future use, cheers. :)
And the customer might be wrong but if he doesn’t like what you’re selling, you don’t make the sale.
This channel continues to set the standard by which other YT mil aviation videos should be judged. It's a high bar.
Watching it on my mobile at Belgowan South Australia, after a 48 km hike from Moonta Bay. Your voice is making my hurting feet feel a lot better for some reason.
Now that sounds like the life right there
Western Australia with you Crowland.😁😁
Sunny Coast Qld
Working stiff In Adelaide’s QEH with you too 🇦🇺✌️
Sounds like a grand time
Regarding end of service life: From Wikipedia:
"During 1956, the Panther was withdrawn from frontline combat service, having been displaced by new fighter aircraft, including its swept-wing Cougar derivative. However, the type remained active in secondary roles, such as for training and with U.S. Naval Air Reserve and U.S. Marine Air Reserve units, until 1958. .... Some Panthers continued to serve in small numbers into the 1960s."
I know, not the best source, but this one seems good researched and it´s just quick and easy.
Also, no criticism intended, just wanted to mention the year 1958 as the main date. Quite a few ended up as target drones and some went to Argentinia second hand, the only foreign user.
Love your channel, keep up the great work! Early Cold War is my main aviation interest beside WWII.
Please do F-101 (maybe one video about A and C and another one on the B interceptor) and Saab Draken (I find it really impressive that Sweden is the only country beside the four major WWII allied powers that has continuously produced state of the art jet fighters since the late 40´s).
The full saying is: The customer is always right in matters of taste.
And history shows that Grumman is always right when you want a naval fighter.
I love the idea of the test pilot coming up with the solution to dropping the landing speed. I cannot imagine the same happening today.
Then you have no imagination. A good test pilot is USUALLY extremely knowlegeable about aerodynamic...otherwise they'd be to uncertain to perform effectively.
It's not G.I. Joe cartoon/comic book shit. It's a serious business and despite what some would have you believe, they don't choose expendable idiots for test pilots.
IIRC, Ted Williams was actually too big to safely eject from the Panther, but being a fighter he talked his way into the aircraft. He probably would not have survived ejecting, since his legs would have been mangled, if not amputated outright by the instrument panel.
Early ejection seats used a blank 37mm shell to blast the crew clear... the thing about that is...
It's just a tube of boom... unlike a solid rocket motor that can be packed to provide a (comparatively speaking) "measured" acceleration force over time...
When a shell fires you get ALL of the impulse RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.
Honestly, I'd ride a rocket seat for shits and giggles. Seriously. I'd ride that fucker for free right now, gimme a helmet, a well packed chute and saddle me up. Helluva carnival ride, right?
a seat using a blank cannon shell ? Yeah... fuck that. You'd have to pay me to voluntarily take that ride. Like high seven figures at least.
0 to HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK?! in .10 of a second.
@@stinkyfungus Yep. With those early boom buckets, back problems were to be expected--far worse than later seats.
Skyraiders used a rocket system. I believe unique to that airplane. Apparently much smoother. And fewer injuries.@@stinkyfungus
@paulmanson253 IRRC, skyraiders used what they called a "traction rocket" ejection seat, it was a rocket motor that fired separate from the seat, which pulled the seat up a track and out on some sort of teather
So the rocket motor would have a softer start, and the teather that attached it to the seat probably had some sort of dynamic stretch built into it so it would take some of the initial shock as it came taught.
@@stinkyfungus Yes, the 'extraction seat'; much lighter and easier install in an aircraft not designed for the heavy, bulky ejection models.
I'll be honest, I never was an airplane or air forces person until your channel. You have made the topic interesting and exceptionally well presented.
Airplanes have kept my interest for 70 yrs. You are lucky to have such a wide array of info at your fingertips.
I remember posting a comment about a year or so ago on another aviation channel, to the effect that while I've long been pretty familiar with development of hot jets in the 70s and 80s (the ones that were still in service or about to retire as I was growing up) I've long had a blind spot in my knowledge of Gen 1 and Gen 2 fighters and attack aircraft, early naval jets in particular.
A couple of months later, up pops this great channel with a slew of excellent documentaries on that very subject!
They’re the most beautiful, with curved lines and elegant tails ends. The Hawker Hunter is gen.2 and shows this in wing and tail plan, with fillets to adjoining elements.
@@fredeagle3912 I've seen a Hunter in person at Fighter World, New South Wales, located just outside Newcastle airport/RAAF Willamtown airbase. It is indeed a very sleek and purposeful looking aircraft. I really like look of the triangular intakes in the wing roots, which I believe was first seen on the Vampire but persisted (in modified form) through several later Gen 2/Gen 3 aircraft like the Vulcan and the Thunderchief before the move to larger slab/ramp style intakes. The tail plans of these early jets, especially many of the carrier based fighter/interceptors, are some of the most elegant "looks good, is good" designs in aviation history, even though they were eventually replaced by more efficient configurations.
Fighterworld's Hawker Hunter (F74S RSAF 546) is now on loan to the Hunter Fighter Collection Museum; "Hunter" refers to the Hunter Valley region of central NSW, not the airframe. They have a nice little collection up there, I'm planning to go for a visit with the camera soon. :)
@@fredeagle3912 I've actually seen a Hawker Hunter in the metal, an ex Royal Singaporean Air Force airframe that was purchased by an Australian businessman and was donated to Fighter World in New South Wales (located just outside Newcastle Airport which shares its main runway with RAAF Base Williamtown). It really is wonderfully sleek and elegant looking aeroplane. I particularly like the look of the triangular intakes in the wing roots. By pleasant coincidence, the aircraft is now on loan from Fighter World to the Hunter Fighter Collection Museum (referring to the Hunter Valley region of central NSW), so it's now living out its time as a Hunter in the Hunter. :)
Aurora models box art. Love it. I'm 73 and grew up on Naval Air Stations before spending 20 years in myself, 1970-1990 , as an aircraft mechanic . I do remember the Panthers. We lived at at NAS Miramar, Ca., in the early 50s, where my Dad worked in the operations office. I remember sitting in one at an airshow. I was probably about 5 at the time. I did build the Aurora model that had the same box art.
Born in Coronado, and grew up in Clairemont, not far from where Albert Hickman crashed the Demon to avoid going into Hawthorne Elementary School.. You were there a bit before me, however I attended MANY of the NAS Miramar Air Shows during the 1970's, early 1980's. Like you, I love the old Aurora box art, and built several Aurora kits back in the day. They were very simple, but always finished up as a nice, scale model worthy of display. All the best to you my friend!
Iconic. It will always be the film star of the bridges at toko ri for me.
21:50 My sainted father served on board the Valley Forge, CV-45 as an Aviation Electronics Technician (AT) during the Korea War. The Valley Forge was in port in Japan when North Korea invaded South Korea which explains how they were able to start sending in strikes so soon after the start of the invasion.
One year for Christmas (I think I was 5 years old), Santa Claus brought me a G.I. Joe and a jet airplane which was a scaled down version of the F9F Panther (it sort of resembled the Panther. Sort of). Since this was back when G.I. Joe was about the same size as a Barbie doll, the airplane was really big, or so my 5-year old mind thought. At least it was bigger than Barbie's cheesy pink car.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The F9F/F9 swept wing varient is one of the best looking fighter plane ever built!
Wow! I immediately recognized your thumbnail photo as being the box art from the old Aurora Model Co., Grumman F9F Panther, 1/48 scale, plastic model kit. It was one of Aurora's first plastic models along with their Lockheed XF-90 kit from the mid 1950s (allegedly, both were copied from the Hawk Model Co. kits of the same aircraft leading to some legal action on the part of Hawk against Aurora). Interesting, detailed story on the iconic, U.S. Navy Panther and thanks for sharing!
You are correct! I like he uses boxart for thumbnails….hes a builder and vintage kit collector like myself, I presume
At 67 now, I have been building models since I was about 10. I've built many a Panther kit. I remember the old Aurora kits, but today's kits are so much better detailed, but some older kits are still available. The old 1/48 Academy kit of the Panther is still found today.
The XF-90 was a stunner of an aircraft, absolutely beautiful. Too bad it was underpowered and there aren't any intact examples left today. Just part of one that got wrecked in a nuke test.
Please make a video about the cougar as well, you cant really find a high quality one on youtube
Bingo, Bango, Bongo
I think this was the plane Al Claviizi in Quantum Leap used to fly when he started his career (see the episode when Sam leaps into a young Al).
I love that you used the old Aurora Panther box art for your thumbnail.
Greatly influenced by Men of the Fighting Lady and Bridges of Toko-Ri, the Panther has always been one of my favorite aircraft. Thanks for featuring her on the channel.
Thank-you for this excellent video. My father flew F9f-5s off of the Tarawa on a round the world cruise in 1954. I remember him leaving from Jax NAS to join the carrier, only to have to return because he took the car keys. Oh well, a bit more flight time, he always liked that. I have some of his log books and instruction manuals.
My dad serviced Panthers on the Princeton during the Korean war. They've always held a place in my heart. Neat plane. I later became and A&P, though never worked on military aircraft, but I've come to appreciate the technology and resourcefulness of folks from that era. I've watched more than a dozen documentaries on the Panthers/Cougars, and I'm pretty sure in several it's said that Grumman proposed the swept wing but it was the military that rejected the idea (as opposed to what you reported here). Are you sure about that? That detail caught me off guard. Regardless, excellent documentary. Thanks so much.
Love the way you ended this video, with the silent flyby. Great work on this series. A lot of this footage and photography is new to me.
Wonderful video! This arrived much sooner than I expected, and it's a very well done look at one of my favorite jets. Looking forward to further videos that may go further into the respective McDonnell and Grumman lineages going up through the Cold War.
Another week, another great video, and about my favorite 1st gen jet, too! Thanks for your hard work!
I love the early jets, and this channel is by far the best I have found.
Another wonderful video, thank you for slaking the thirst of all of us aircraft nerds! I'm sure I don't have to tell you which video comes next.....the Cougar, of course!
Always liked the Panther, it's got a chunky, yet sleek form.
Thanks for a very informative video. Packed in a lot of material touching on many aspects of carrier ops.
Great documentary!
Icons from astronauts "John Glenn and Neil Armstrong to MLB-Great "Splendid-Spitter Ted Williams" the introduction of the jet era. Should animate-simulate their combat-missions during the Korean War.
Another great video! This series of videos is incredibly valuable for aviation history lovers.
An excellent video ty!
Right! that was great movie.Was a kid in UK and any picture in this vane was much in demand(in colour,jets, helicopters, aircraft carriers it was great stuff!
In its Dash 2 iteration, the Panther is simply the most beautiful jet aircraft ever built IMHO. Even the Dash 5 scrubs up nicely. Thank you for another excellent presentation.
The F9F looks like the stereotypical imagining of what a jet fighter would look like even today, all the moreso in the 1950s and 60s, for people who don't really know or care much about airplanes. It just looks standard (this is a cool thing). It's like the generic jet from a cartoon artist.
Thats so true
I don't think so. That tail and the intakes are very distinctive. The only part of it that looks "typical" is the straight wing and tip tanks. And I don't think there are many people who still visualize a straight wing jet as a typical fighter. The F-80 is a lot more generic looking.
Really appreciate this video and can't say enough good things about the presentation. Very well done and thorough. Especially enjoy the fact that you back up the drier facts with other commentary that gives a personal aspect to the video, as well. Beautiful balance. This level of work will certainly pay off. It would be a travesty if you didn't make 100K subscribers in the next year.
"North American Aviation got an order for their Fury, which would turn out to be largely useless, and Vaught for the Pirate, which was worse." LOL, nice!
Very well presented; thank you.
Exceptional, thank you
One of my favorite channels...
Good video, enjoyed it.
Really enjoy this channels specific aircraft detailed aircraft analysis….
I would love to see a video on the Douglas Skyknight!
Your wish is his command.
I found this video very interesting and informative. I was a kid when the Korean War started, and always liked the design of the Panther. All of Grumman's cats, actually.
🇦🇺 Great informative video - love the Panther!
Great video. Beautiful plane, especially in Navy blue.
She's pretty, isnt she?
Corky Meyer’s gun gas flight was much more dramatic than it is made to sound here. The entire nose cone left the plane and the resulting drag almost caused the plane to decelerate below stall speed even at WOT. Only be entering a slight dive was he able to maintain flight. The question was whether he would make landfall before running out of fuel.
He did make landfall but for safety he landed at Republic’s airfield.
Also, the only reason he made this flight was that he had never fired a Panther’s guns so the operations honcho scheduled one more flight with Meyer as the lead pilot. He hadn’t been briefed by the engineers which is why he deviated from the specified protocol as detailed in the vid. The engineers were none to happy with him.
The full story I found in a GA magazine from the late 70s early 80s.
TY for the Ted William's story. LOL
Nice channel!
At the very beginning, you mentioned, Grumman built the hellcat and the avenger, and you mentioned them as fighters to the best of my knowledge the avenger was a torpedo bomber
My thought as well.
Another solid video -- thanks! This is a great example of the Grumman Iron Works, doing what they do best. It's also interesting to me that neither the Panther nor the Banshee saw much in the way of export sales. I'm guessing the performance compromises to operate from carriers made them hard to compete with land-based early jet fighters like the F-86.
Banshees went to Canada. Panthers went to Argentina.
My father was a radar technician on the USS Boxer CV-21 shown at 23:36 from '47-'49. The Boxer was the first carrier to have a jet take off and land.
Grumman aircraft finally! Let's Effin Go!
Ted Willams? A name I have not thought about in oh 50 years at least. As a child I had a glove that had Ted Williams signature embossed on it. I wasn't a ball player, and the glove wasn't special, but I can still see the endorsement signature in my memory.
Another great video! No mention of A-26/B-26 Invader :)
Why would we? There is a entire separate video on that topic.
FWIW: Last night I watched a couple of movie clips from *THE BRIDGES OF TOKO-RI* here on YT.
I just saw this video and had to watch it...👍
YESSS!
Whoa... 19:16 is a **moment** i ACTUALLY recognize from MIDWAY and HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER!!! I thought it was based on the crash that killed Lt Hultgreen 25 Oct, 1994... now I know.
The Hunt for Red October came out in 1990, a few years before Hultgreen’s fatal accident in 1994.
Meanwhile, the old(er) Midway movie came out in 1976, which was before the Tomcat even first flew (in 1979).
One of my faves thanks to The Bridges At Toko-Ri, and I'm pretty sure the only model jet I have built in all three scales (72, 48, and the fantastic Fischer 32nd). My first boss in my engineering career had been a plane handler on the Kearsage during the Korean war...he once described to me that exact scene @10:00.
Great video but a minor point; I believe the first jet-power only landing on a US carrier was by the mixed-power Ryan Fireball in 1945 when one of the early machines suffered a failure of the front-mounted piston engine and, as a result, the pilot landed on jet power only.
The Panther is my favorite naval jet fighter, they just look so good and were a work horse in their own right, sadly I have only been able to see a Cougar so far
Thanks for the detailed history and perspective, great stuff! William Holden got shot down in it and Mickey Rooney and Earl Holliman were sent in a helo to save him in Korea. BTW, @27:20, that's the first ever jet kill for America and it was from the US Navy, lol.
An interesting bit of trivia is that both the Panther and the MiG 15 had the same engine - copies of the Rolls-Royce Nene. The Panther was the first American jet to down a MiG 15 in the Korean war.
That picture during the phase out narrative was the training command in Pensacola. Both the Panther and the Cougar served their last days as advanced trainers or drones.
Will you please do a series of the forward observation aircraft like the OV-10 Bronco and AO-37 Dragonfly (sometimes known as bait)? Not very sexy but, still key part of the missions during their utilization.
Always loved the Panther! I believe it could've lasted longer in service if the company would've gone ahead with sweeping back the wings and improving the engine as it aged.
They did. It's known as the f9f cougar.
Great video as always, but is it possible you could also give stats in metric too? Thanks
My dad was a F9F pilot with VF 52
My dad was a crew chief with VF52 on the Boxer!
His plane number was 202
That footage of the flagger (when did they start using the bats?) reminded me of the reddit post i read the other day with multiple people talking about "waiving off a landing". Apparently none of them know how carrier landings used to work. Or have even seen a guy run out onto a field and wave a pilot away to warn him it's not safe to land.
Which is fine but most of them seemed to think they were experts or even ex aviation crew.
Ted was a gamer brave to a fault, I will miss him
That tail looks rather Gannetish .
Ahh , the Fairey Gannet.
Queen of the Skies!
For those seeking a good telling of US Navy air ops during Korea, I highly recommend "Holding The Line" by Tom Cleaver. Actually, I recommend any of Tom's books covering air combat since WW2.
As a companion book for "Holding The Line" by Tom Cleaver I also highly recommend "Such Men as These: The Story of the Navy Pilots Who Flew the Deadly Skies over Korea" by David Sears.
@@lizardb8694 Locked on and downloaded Lizard! Thanks!
Well known in “Bridges At Toko Ri” and “Men Of The Fighting Lady”.
Did somebody REALLY need to invent the word 'downselect?' Select is perfectly adequate!
Wrong. When you DOWNshift, you Down select. When you UPshift, you Up select. "Select" would tell you nothing specific, at a time when a bad choice could mean the difference between jumping over the canyon or INTO it.
@craigwall9536 well, we get by without that word in Britain
@@oxcart4172 Are you kidding??? It was British to begin with!!!
@@craigwall9536 fair enough. Its not the first time I've been wrong, and I doubt it'll be the last!
@@oxcart4172 Don't feel like the Lone Ranger. It happens to us all!
Now, whenever I hear the Panther mentioned, I flash back to the alt-history scifi series For All Makind, where astronaut Ed Baldwin's backstory was that he was a Navy Panther pilot in Korea. His wife had nightmares about his possible death there, anthropomorphized as a no-sh&t blue-skinned panther eating him...and one of her helpful (and extremely high) fellow NASA spouses drew the scene in detail for her as a coping exercise.
HE DREW THE PANTHER EATING ED. Lol!
👍👍
Please do a video on the F-8 Crusader !
A true Vietnam war mig master
Wow. It's the only aircraft I've heard of that could sneeze so hard it might blow its nose off! lol
I already draw ✏️ that jet, but it's sounds interesting ✈️✈️✈️
Nesher/Kfir vid 🙏🏼
...more different than one might think.
The Blue Angels actually filled the tip tanks with red & blue colored water, to be discharged from the vents during some maneuvers.
25:54 seems like the table you were referencing was omitted in the final edit.
Single-pount fueling, more of a luxury than I realized.
I like straight tapering wings, like a seagull. I wonder how an elliptical swept wings were ever tried. A super- spitfire wing with laminar flow section and swept back about 47deg mean chord with washout at pointed wingtips. It should go transonic.
Will need the biggest slide rule for that one.
My dad flew F-9s in flight school, F-11s for gunnery.
3 December 1945: The first landing and takeoff aboard an aircraft carrier by a jet-powered aircraft were made by Lieutenant-Commander Eric Melrose Brown, M.B.E., D.S.C., R.N.V.R., Chief Naval Test Pilot at RAE Farnborough, while flying a de Havilland DH. 100 Sea Vampire Mk. 10, LZ551/G.
A very pretty gem of an aircraft which achieved. For so fundamentally simple an aircraft why aren’t any still flying?
That is indeed kind of sad that none survived to current flying status. Unlike say F-86s and T-33s. Maybe due to numbers built and that they lived fairly tough lives?
Most got scrapped or used as targets.
"Alternate" - two thing switching turn and turn about (unless you're American)
"Careening" - pulling a ship onto its side to clean or repair its hull (unless you're American)
You didn't mention the F9F-5 Crash being in the film The Final Countdown.
I'm surprised that you didn't mention the Hybrid FR-1 Fireball (Radial piston engine & propeller up front, Jet engine in back)
Why?
Grumman stands for 'endurance first and evolution happens along the way'.... Oldschool engineering folks...
This big cat has a VSN mod on DCS... somebody should go on and make a "landed on the wrong carrier" skin for it tho...
Great job, Fly Navy….
Table of deployment by types at 26min. Did the table not make it into the video?
Heck , lol I’d like to own any of these
Speaking as a Brit, what the hell were we playing at considering we invented the bloody things.
The will to achieve jet flight and ability to sustain development into a viable weapon are 2 different abilities
Rather than buy American aircraft , you kept funding a myriad of British aircraft companies to keep them alive. None of them that was particularly great. And by the time they did buy something good? And when they decided to get good? They cut defense.
Some panther pilots are still waiting for throttle inputs
So...the first human test of an ejection seat was in an emergency? I would not have expected that.
No, I think he was referring to a human test of that particular Navy designed seat. Though there is some evidence that a German pilot may have been the first to use an ejection seat late in WW2, the first officially recognized one was by Bernard Lynch, an engineer with Martin-Baker, July 1946. Soon followed in August , the first American to test an ejection seat was 1stSgt Lawrence Lambert.
@@orangelion03 few know that Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame was the first person to test a Martin Baker Ejection Seat in flight for the Brits. On purpose. I think it was from a 2-seat Gloster Meteor.
@@craigwall9536 No, that would have been Bernard Lynch ejecting out of a Meteor, July 1946. I have not read of any official tests that involved Serling. Early American seat tests were performed using modified P-61 by Lambert etc. The story you speak of appears to be "internet lore" and it involves a two seat Mustang...
I don’t think any human ejects when it’s not an emergency.
@@orangelion03 I may have the airplane wrong and it may not have been the Martin Baker seat, but Serling WAS a paid ejection seat volunteer test subject. Dig around in his bios. The people that write those things up are not always technically accurate, but the fact that he was an ejection seat tester IS true.
15:50 IT SNEEZED.