Explosive Decompression

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M

MIflyer

1st Lieutenant
7,158
14,788
May 30, 2011
Cape Canaveral
When you go through USAF altitude chamber training the most exciting part is when they close the door between the "airlock" and the rest of the chamber, take the chamber to 8000 ft while the airlock is taken to 25,000 ft, and then open the door between the two sections. The pressure altitude instantly goes to 20,000 ft, there are a few seconds of dense fog, and you have to put on your oxygen mask, turn on the regulator, and start doing the "Val Salva" by pinching your nose and blowing as the chamber simulates a rapid descent. The attached article describes an incident where this scenario was real.

 
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The guy who activated the hatch jettison had his helmet and oxygen mask ripped off his head. Presumably one of the other crew members using a walk-around bottle got him another mask or brought him a mask and bottle. I recall a longish message detailing what occurred when a B-52 lost pressurization with the crew chief along for a ride, napping in the passageway between the cockpit and the rest of the crew positions. One of the crew members got up from his seat to fit an oxygen mask on the crew chief but forget to take a walk around bottle and passed out himself. Then another crew member responded exactly the same way, with the same results and fell from the upper deck to the lower one, thereby getting the two lower crew members involved. This Keystone Cops routine continued until everyone but the pilot and copilot had passed out at least once.

 

That replacement in the seat needs to be happy it wasn't an ACES-II.
 
A friend of mine had to bail out of a B-36 over the Atlantic Ocean and I think he also had to punch out of a B-66. Not enjoyable experiences, either.
 
I heard of an incident at San Antonio Air Logistics Center in the 1970's. They were testing the canopy jettison sequence for the T-37. They had purchased a new lot of bolts that held the canopy onto the hinge and it turned out to have been a good idea to test them.

Two test personnel got in the T-37 on the ground and activated the canopy jettison function. But instead of breaking off properly the canopy pivoted upward, hit the stops of the hinge and came right back down, jamming and trapping the test personnel in the airplane.

It turned out that the bolts were specified to be of such and such diameter, length, and thread - and of a specified strength. The company that supplied the bolts had provided some that were much stronger than that specified. Now, you can't complain about bolts that are stronger than specified, right? But when the bolts MUST break at a specified load to make the ejection system work, that is not true.
 
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