Great read, thank you.<p>A very lucky man, especially given that his crew mate bailed out before him, at higher altitude, going slower. The fact that between deciding to bail and pulling the handle took 4,000' is astonishing: 780mph is very, very fast.
This probably helps to explain why aircraft design has flirted with full escape capsules <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_crew_capsule" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_crew_capsule</a> in the past.
Very touching. He lost his friend during the ordeal.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/HecyxhXDepU" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/HecyxhXDepU</a>
Another great ejection story is <a href="http://www.damninteresting.com/rider-on-the-storm/" rel="nofollow">http://www.damninteresting.com/rider-on-the-storm/</a>
My fighter pilot fried has told me stories, he's said, "Ejecting is the last thing you want to do, you'll come out of it a few inches shorter, if you survived the 10% chance of dying from your neck hitting the canopy."
Alexander Konovalov, survived an ejection at Mach 2.6 from Mig 25 <a href="http://www.flightgear.dk/mach26eject.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.flightgear.dk/mach26eject.htm</a>
I wonder if he would have made it if he'd tried to pull out of the dive rather than ejecting. I was trying to figure the numbers - I get he'd have to achieve about 3g vertical deacceleration which I guess he could have got pulling the stick back for say 10g?