Bailing out or Ditching at Sea: Which was Safer?

[Greg Boeser]

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.

 

[Greg Boeser]

Not sure if there is a difference in ditching with landing gear down or landing gear UP.

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.
This is what killed Koga on Akutan, when he landed in a marsh.
Navalized Ju-87s had jettisonable landing gear for water landings.

 

[GrauGeist]

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

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.

 

[Joel Dobson]

This is not about WWII aircraft so it may be a bit off topic, but the background for the B-52 ditching/bailout procedures were based on experiences from WWII. When ditching, B-52 crewmembers on the lower deck (navigator and radar navigator, plus any 'ride-along') were to climb up the ladder to the upper deck and remove the ditching hammocks from their storage. They would then hook them up to the one overhead point and two deck points and climb in, facing aft. This would position them with their arms around knees and head down- the best way to absorb forward Gs.
If bailing out in a controlled situation, where they knew they had some time and could fly level, there was a sequence of bailout. First, the Navigator since he was on the lower deck and needed to 'make a hole' in the bottom of the aircraft for the ride-alongs, the guys without ejection seats. They would jump through the hole and manually pull their D ring. The Radar/Navigator would make sure any ride-alongs were out before he departed downward.
Then the EWO on the top deck, ejecting upwards; then the gunner, then co-pilot, and last the pilot, all ejecting upwards.
That was in a 'controlled situation.''
In an 'uncontrolled' or flat out emergency, the bail out command would be given by the commander over the interphone and the bailout bell rang.
Word was, if the pilot said "bailout!" and you said "huh?" it was your airplane.

 

[fliger747]

My skating partner was a B52 EWO, he lived "downstairs" with the Nav/Radar. I'll ask him about it tomorrow.

 

[MIflyer]

While the Typhoon had terrible ditching characteristics, the Tempest ditched just fine. It was not the big radiator up front that produced the poor ditching characteristics but rather the wing, which was much thinner on the Tempest than the Typhoon.

 

[fubar57]

From "Pilot Notes for Typhoon Marks IA and IB Sabre II or IIA Engine"

 

[fubar57]

From "Pilot"s Notes for Tempest V Sabre IIA Engine"....basically the same

 

[pinehilljoe]

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 was curious about how many seconds may have been edited from the time of ditching to sinking in the video.

Monterey was 622 feet long.

Assume she was making 10 kts during the crash. If she was doing landing ops speed would have been higher, more like 20kts or more. 10kts = 16.8 ft/s

Hard to be sure how far ahead of Monterey the Hellcat ditched, you can see the edge of the flight deck at the start of the video, so the Hellcat ditched off Monterey's bow, but lets say a full length of the ship. The ship was next to the plane when it sank so if the plane ditched a full length ahead, Monterey had sailed less than two full ship lengths from ditching to sinking. Being conservative, lets assume the ship sailed two lengths from the time of ditching to time of sinking, or 1244 ft.

1244ft at 10 knots would be about 75 seconds from ditching to sinking, if she was doing 20kts that drops to 37 seconds, which is the length of the video clip.

In the video I don't see battle damage to let water in more than normal.

If you are wounded, that is not a lot of time to unstrap, pull yourself out and jump into the water before sinking.

 

[GrauGeist]

An extract from an F6F pilot's memoirs on ditching his F6F after taking a direct hit from Japanese AA during a raid on Okinawa.

By LCDR Norman P. Stark USNR(R):

...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...

To read the full memoir, visit here: F6F Fighter Pilot Experiences in the Pacific

 

[fliger747]

I asked My B52 EWO friend today and he confirmed that he sat upstairs, back to back with the co-pilot. Asked about ditching and he didn't know of any procedure and he flew them for years. He said that they did fly a couple into the water at night time low level missions, but that doesn't qualify as a ditching.

 

[confused]

I have a friend , now in his 90's, who was a pilot, and DFC winner, with 455 Squadron RAAF based at Leuchars 1944-45. He told me how Beaufighters would sink after about 90 seconds following a ditching. By example, he related how returning after a shipping strike over Norway, he "rode shotgun" on a squadron mate who'd been damaged by 109's. Near the Shetlands, the crippled Beau ditched and John said the crew had ample time (for that aircraft type) to get out, inflate their dingy(ies) and await a resuce launch. To make it easier to find them John and his observer circled them until the launch arrived....it took such a time that he landed at Sullom Voe RAF base after dark, and flying on vapours alone....made even more complicated by the Base Commander only turning on the runway lights long enough for John to get his bearings. Sadly the two men he'd watched over were killed on a strike two weeks later and are buried on Haugesund. That's Fate, she won't be cheated.

 

[Navalwarrior]

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.

Resp:
In the 1990s, I read 'A Day in History' story about a US Navy LT Commander who completed his tour in the PTO who requested an assignment, rather than return home to the states. He received orders to England to head a UDT (underwater demolition teams) unit in collecting sand samples along the beaches @ Normandy, to determine the best areas that would best support heavy vehicles, especially tanks. The LCDR managed to hook up w Royal Navy and rode the Channel via their MTBs. What he learned was that the Germans (at least by late 1943/44) rarely fired upon the RN MTBs. The reasoning was that the Royal Navy rescued Luftwaffe pilots as well as Allied pilots.
Knowing this, the LCDR acquired a couple of US PT boats and configured them as MTBs by painting, etc. They even went to the point of flying the Union Jack. Next, he reviewed hundreds of Naval personnel records, where he recruited sailors who were 'archers' in their civilian life. So in predawn hours, teams were sent in via rubber rafts to take soil samples of the Normandy beaches; the archers at the bow ready to take out any surprised sentry, should they come upon. The plan was to take the body and his weapon w them when they left the area, so no one would be 'the wiser' to what actually occurred. The story didn't say whether the archers ever had to shoot.

 

[fubar57]

It must have been okay to ditch a B-24, from "Pilot Training Manual for the Liberator"

 

[fubar57]

Ditto B-25

 

[fubar57]

B-26B-1 & -26C

 

[fubar57]

The B-29 Ditching Section is 6½ pages long; the thing must have stayed afloat for weeks to get through that check list

 

[fubar57]

The B-17F & -17G have four pages of instructional cartoons

 

[Glider]

The only military aircraft I have flown in is a Hunter and the ditching notes basically said 'don't do it'. They used different words but that sums it up.

 

[swampyankee]

I remember a piece on the Flight 19 TBM's which said something to the effect of "the Avenger had good ditching characteristics; it would stay afloat for 45 seconds."

Aircraft are usually not designed to alight on water; figure ditching has all the bad points of landing gear-up with the added possibility of drowning.