‘Catapults you into the heart of the most epic experiences of ejection, escape and survival’
Andy McNab
‘I thought the ejection seat was a rather dangerous, somewhat curious contraption. But that I would never need it . . .’
When Jo Lancaster, the first British pilot to eject in an emergency, triggered his ejection seat in 1949, it took thirty seconds before he was safely away from the aircraft and under his parachute. Since those first post-Second World War ejections, many tens of thousands of lives have been saved by increasingly sophisticated escape systems. When John Nichol’s Tornado was blasted out of the sky during the 1991 Gulf War, a mere 2.5 seconds elapsed between pulling the ejection handle and his parachute opening. Today, the newest seats can automatically initiate ejection if the system decides the pilot faces mortal danger and cannot react quickly enough.
Now, Nichol tells the incredible sto
