Greg Boeser
1st Sergeant
Ron Pottinger, in A Soldier in the Cockpit, tells of a night-time ditching in a Typhoon, which he managed to survive. A rare thing.
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Landing gear down is bad. The wheels dig in and flip you on your back. You are thrown violently into the gunsight, get knocked out and drown.Not sure if there is a difference in ditching with landing gear down or landing gear UP.
Good video, but at 16 seconds, there is a jump forward in the footage. The F6F took longer to slip under than the clip shows.Here's a video of a Hellcat. In about 40 seconds its underwater, but its hard to tell if it was edited. I can imagine if you had any kind of injury, getting out of the cockpit in 40 seconds would be a challenge. This is not the video I remember from the film about Flight 19
Here's a video of a Hellcat. In about 40 seconds its underwater, but its hard to tell if it was edited. I can imagine if you had any kind of injury, getting out of the cockpit in 40 seconds would be a challenge. This is not the video I remember from the film about Flight 19
...I had just released my bomb, when I heard an explosion and felt a tremendous concussion that lifted my plane up like a great hand. I realized immediately that I had been hit by a burst of anti-aircraft fire. I looked at the engine gages. The oil, and gasoline pressures both dropped to zero. The engine quit, and although I tried, I couldn't get the engine started. I must have been hit in the accessory section, causing all engine and hydraulic functions to cease.
In the dive I had attained approximately 425 Knots. I had plenty of speed, but I did not have many options. I had to make a quick decision.
We had been briefed that a rescue submarine operating off the East Coast of Okinawa would not attempt to get around the reef into the East China Sea to effect a rescue. Therefore, I could not expect help from that area. I could either bail out, land on the island or land at sea. My mind was quickly made up. We had made the dive on a westerly heading, so I would use my speed to fly west, as far as possible, into the East China Sea. I pulled out of the dive at about 2000 feet and did not try to gain altitude. My speed was sufficient to take me a half-mile off the West Coast of Okinawa. I dropped the belly tank, opened the canopy, unfastened my parachute harness, tightened my seat belt, and lowered the tail hook. The sea was relatively calm, which makes it difficult to estimate height above the surface. Therefore, the lowered tail hook would touch the water first and give me a feeling for when to stall the plane and complete my landing.
The landing, about 40 degrees out of the wind, was a smooth one. As the plane slowed, I unfastened my seat belt and jumped out on the wing. I reached back into the cockpit and separated the one-man raft from the parachute. I turned around, intending to run to the end of the wing and jump into the water, away from any entanglements, or any suction created as the plane sank. As I turned around from the cockpit, with the uninflated raft in my hand, the plane sank. It didn't stay afloat more than 15 or 20 seconds after coming to a stop. There must have been a terrific hole in the accessory section, on the bottom of my plane, to permit such rapid foundering. As the plane went under, I was caught on the horizontal stabilizer, and had a few frightening moments disentangling myself...
Resp:During the Battle of Britain the RAF instructed pilots not to chase the LW back over the channel. Even if you came down in sight of land your chances of being rescued alive were slim. In a single engine aircraft ditching in the sea it can sink in seconds if indeed it holds together at all, if you are strapped in you don't have time to release the straps if you are not strapped in you are not capable of getting out. Catapult launched hurricane pilots used to parachute out when their mission was over rather than ditching. An ex forum member here, the late Bill Runnels described how he used an early type of what we would call a floatation chamber in training for his service in the B-17 I believe by the time he passed out of training it was compulsory in the USA.