Page 309 - Demo

305tried to do that. At some point during the enquiry, I was told that I had made a premeditated ejection and I was surprised at that. Obviously, it was true in that I knew we were going to, but flying the aircraft in the condition it was in must have been challenging and took up a lot of my capabilities. When the aircraft rolled when I first let go of the stick, it did so quickly, which was only to be expected with the front of the aircraft bent out to the left. I then put in some aileron trim to reduce the rate of roll. I suspect that if I had not done so the 1.25 seconds delay in Dode ejecting would have meant that the aircraft would then have been inverted. We had a command ejection system such that 1.25 seconds after my seat fired, his seat would do so automatically. It was important that there was a gap otherwise the seats might collide which could be fatal. I was always worried that if I said ejecting that the student would do so with out waiting. In the event I thinks I said %u201cI am fed up with this, I%u2019m going out%u201d.The feeling of being shot down a dark tunnel was because of acceleration errors. The semi-circular canals that help us stay upright detected the acceleration of the seat and interpreted that as my body being rotated backwards through 90 degrees. It was black because under positive G you black out as the blood retreats from your brain. Also, my eyelids were pulled shut.Once we were in the helicopter, I asked if we could go to York District Hospital where Gabby worked but they said no, we were going to Hull. We were taken out of the helicopter taken into the A & E area. I felt a complete fraud as we were rushed past various people waiting to be seen and taken into a small ward. The doctors were experienced with ejection seat injuries as in the past there had been a number of ejections from Lightnings, although they used an older type of seat than ours. Back injuries were quite common from ejections. The vertebrae were sometimes compressed and sometimes actually fractured. They were