S-76 Down with Kobe Bryant, Daughter and 7 others

[rwanttaja]

Kind of like in early WW I some German pilots were lost going down with their planes, even on fire, because the rigid and foolish idea, now long ago disproven that the pilots should not have parachutes as it might make them jump out too soon.

Actually, that wasn't just the Germans...the Allied brass hats had the same opinion. See Arthur Gould Lee's book, "No Parachute."

The RAF finally relented just prior to the end of the war, but that was probably in reaction to the fact that German pilots had been authorized to wear parachutes a year earlier. They'd developed the Heinicke parachute system by 1917, and gave their pilots the option to wear it if they wished.


I haven't found any list of "saves", but the reports by Allied pilots increasingly mention that their foes had escaped by parachute. Again, this probably led to eventual RAF approval.

In "Ace of the Iron Cross," Ernst Udet describes his successful bail-out in combat. If you've read the book, "The Blue Max," the Heinicke harness is mentioned there (and not in a flattering light).

Parachutes had existed for balloon observers, of course, but those parachutes weren't really suited to fighter aircraft...they were heavy, bulky, and didn't have ripcords....they were designed to be pulled out of their case by the weight of a man falling.

The aversion to safety gear didn't end with the Great War. There was a lot of resistance in the early days of WWII to stuff like armor plate on the back of pilot's seats and bullet-proof glass windshields. It's said that Dowding issued a peevish memo, saying "I do not understand why the gangsters of Chicago can have bullet-proof windscreens and my pilots cannot." Tuck's biography describes his plane having a bullet-proof windscreen installed on his Spitfire just before taking off on a sortie, and coming back with two bullet scars in the middle of it.

One should note, though, that the resistance was not always from the brass. Pilots sometimes objected to the increased weight and other perceived problems. If you've read the book "Piece of Cake," the author shows one of the pilots salvaging a piece of armor plate from a BF-109 and installing it behind his own Hurricane's seat. The other pilots are aghast; it's not sporting, and doesn't it affect the way the machine handles? As the phony war ends, though, more and more start adding armor.

A lot of times, the limit of aviation safety technology is not merely the capabilities provided, it's the ACCEPTANCE of the technology by the pilots involved. The "Shut up and die like an aviator" mindset still exists.... we see it in reaction to every Cirrus CAPS save. There's a lot of pressure in the pilot community to NOT use equipment like that. "A good pilot should have been able to save the airplane!" A CAPS-type system might have saved the Bryant Sikorsky, but would the pilot have used it? It takes a swallowing of the ego, and for most pilots, that's a pretty big lump.

Ejection seats have been installed in all US tactical aircraft since WWII. Nominally, it should have practically eliminated fatalities...but of course, that's not the case. Some instances of course it didn't matter, but in too many, the pilot was unwilling to admit that the problem was beyond his capability and that he needed to turn his fate over to Martin-Baker.

The Bryant crash is likely to result in aviation rulemaking by those who know NOTHING of aviation. Like the Colgan crash, non-flying lawmakers are probably going to pass rules designed to "prevent" reoccurrence. And like the rules promulgated after the Colgan crash, there are going to be impacts far beyond what they think they're fixing.

Ron Wanttaja