Page 133 - Demo

131picked up a contact ahead of us, coming in our direction %u2013 the thot plickens! We were flying in a formation called Card 6 for obvious reasons %u2013 3 pairs in 3-mile trail, each pair in one-mile line abreast.Unfortunately, Approach were confused about which was which in the lead pair, and called the contact in front of No 2 instead of No 1 %u2013 with me so far? This would not have mattered, since the eagle-eyed Frog had a bead on the contact, and called it %u2018down the throat%u2019, a common but non-standard term for another aircraft approaching head-on. We would have known what he meant if, of course, he had been calling it on the same frequency as the rest of us were on.Meanwhile, I had got tired of scanning the sky ahead of Frog, in a vain attempt to acquire the contact, and resumed my normal lookout forward just in time to see my entire windscreen full of Tornado. I ducked instinctively (probably well after he passed) and felt a thump on the airframe. At first the aircraft flew sort of straight, and I thought I%u2019d got away with it. Then it yawed violently, and I jabbed the appropriate rudder pedal (normally a footrest in the Jag). This seemed to do the trick, and I started congratulating myself again, just as a bigger thump from the back heralded the next phase of my flight %u2013 a rapid roll and nose drop, accompanied by an eye-catching assortment of the available lights on the warning panel. This was pretty academic, since it was becoming clear even to me that I wasn%u2019t likely to be around long enough to deal with any of them. Photographic evidence later indicated that this was the point at which the tail fell off.I had been flying at about 1000 feet at 450 knots, so a roll and nose drop didn%u2019t take long to translate itself into a windscreen full of sea. I recall pulling the ejection seat handle, more out of curiosity than hope, and I had adopted the recommended ejection posture, to the extent that my left hand was still on the throttles as I left the aircraft like a sack of spuds. I was conscious of severe tumbling, and then an almighty deceleration (at those heights, there is no time for niceties in the functioning of the seat automatics). About a swing and a half in the parachute, and I hit the sea like a flounder rejected by a trawler, and headed for Davy Jones. I had not even thought about my emergency drills, but I must have done the one that counted %u2013