Capt Ammon was knocked nearly senseless by the explosion; his head smashed against the Plexiglas canopy with enough force to fracture his helmet and mask. Inside the belly of the aircraft, splintered fuel and oil lines fed the already billowing fire. Precious electrical wires that allowed the pilot to control the aircraft were burned almost immediately. Within seconds of the explosion, Ammon was little more than a passenger in a scorching, smoke-filled cockpit. A soft female voice in his headset announced the obvious.
“Warning! Warning! Fire! Fire!”
It took the onboard computer less than two seconds to analyze the deteriorating situation and reach a conclusion. Based on the increasing rate of descent, the presence of the fire, and the lack of thrust, the computer considered the aircraft to be in a situation from which it could not recover. After reaching its conclusion, the computer offered this advice.
“Eject! Eject!” the computer-generated voice called through Ammon’s headset, this time an octave higher and with a significant degree of urgency.
But Capt Ammon wasn’t ready to bail out yet. Although he knew that the burning aircraft would probably not recover, pride and training forced him to try.
He pushed the fire-suppression button, then threw the control stick left and right. No response. The aircraft tucked into an even tighter spin, the G forces pushing him against the sides of the canopy. By now enough smoke had filled the cockpit that he could barely see the instrument panel. The acidic air filtered through his splintered oxygen mask and burned his lungs. “Warning! Fire! Eject! Warning! Fire! Eject!” The voice repeated itself every three seconds, making it even more difficult for Ammon to think.
Peering through the smoke, Ammon searched for the airspeed indicator. Eighty knots! That wasn’t even flying airspeed. He would need at least 200 knots before he could break the spin. And to accelerate, he would need more power.
He jammed the throttle forward into the full afterburner range. But nothing happened. No gentle push of acceleration. No vibration or muffled roar. It wasn’t until then that he noticed the silence. The familiar drone of the engine was no longer there.
Only twenty seconds had passed since the plastique explosives had been detonated, but in that time Ammon’s aircraft had lost more than 10,000 feet. At the rate it was accelerating downward, it would take only fifteen seconds more before it hit the water. His engine was gone, he had no control, his jet was on fire.
It was time to get out.
As he reached for the ejection handle between his knees, Ammon pushed his back straight up against the seat. After tucking in his legs and elbows, he yanked on the yellow-striped handle with all of his might.
In less than a second, explosive bolts fired his canopy clear of the aircraft. Two rocket motors then ignited under his seat, propelling him upward with enough force to shoot the seat two hundred feet into the air. As he began to accelerate up the ejection rails, the first thing Ammon encountered was the incredible wind. It pulled the breath from his lungs and sent his arms flailing like a tattered rag doll at the side of his head. The skin on his face was stretched against his teeth and cheekbones. His left boot was ripped from his foot. The overall effect was like being fired from a cannon into the vortex of a powerful tornado. Ammon had talked to pilots who had survived an ejection before, but nothing prepared him for the sheer force his body now encountered. Although he remained conscious during the entire ejection sequence, disorientation and shock made him only dimly aware of what was happening around him.
Fortunately, the seat and parachute deployment was completely automatic. Seven seconds after pulling the ejection handle, Ammon found himself hanging in his parachute harness as he drifted down toward the sea.
For several seconds he hung in a stupor. Time seemed to have stopped and his mind seemed far, far away, floating in some kind of haze. But as he descended, the initial shock began to wear off and the cool breeze helped to clear his head. Quickly, he looked around him in an effort to regain his bearings. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a trace of flame and followed it as it spiraled downward. He could clearly see the splash and spray in the moonlight as his F-16 impacted the water. For several seconds Ammon stared at the spot, watching the foamy water, illuminated by the moon as it gradually spread and then slowly disappeared. For just a moment he imagined what it would have been like to have been inside the cockpit of his F-16 when it was shattered by the force of the impact. He pictured sections of the cockpit exploding around him and the wave of the incoming sea as the aircraft broke into a thousand pieces and began slowly sinking to the ocean floor. Looking down at the black-gray slate of wrinkled sea, the water seemed so cold. So dark. A horrible place to die. He shook his head and tried to clear the image from his mind as he stared at the glistening ocean below.
Finally, the flapping of his parachute demanded his attention, reminding him that there were certain things he needed to do in order to survive. He couldn’t just hang there in his parachute. He needed to prepare for his water landing or he would drown before he could get inside his life raft.
What had they taught him in ejection seat training? There was a little song that would remind him what to do. As he tried to concentrate, the jingle he had learned several years before slowly came back to mind.
He worked quickly to prepare for his water landing.
Canopy. He looked overhead to make sure his parachute was fully deployed and that none of the nylon canopy lines had wrapped themselves around the top of the parachute.
Visor. He needed to remove the visor that protected his eyes so that it wouldn’t shatter if he fell during landing. Too late, he thought, as he reached up to disconnect the visor. It was already broken and gone.
Mask. He reached up and pulled off his oxygen mask so that he wouldn’t suffocate from sucking water through the airhose and into his mask. After disconnecting the mask, he let it drop to the empty darkness below.
Seat kit. His survival raft was now hanging in a small pouch under his parachute. By pulling the D-ring by his left hip he activated a cylinder of oxygen that would immediately inflate the raft. He listened with relief as the raft hissed and crackled, spreading out below him.
LPUs. Life preserver units. These were the inflatable life preservers attached under each of his arms. Sensors would inflate them automatically when they were submerged in salt water. At least they were supposed to. Ammon felt for the inflation tube under his chin that would allow him to manually inflate the life preservers if necessary.
Looking around now, he tried to judge how high he was above the water. The moon still reflected on the open sea, but everything looked exactly as it had a few minutes earlier when he had stared down from his jet as he circled at 23,000 feet. He felt from the warm temperature and humid air that he was quite low, and guessed that he had only a few thousand feet to go.
Suddenly he was engulfed in the cold and salty water of the Yellow Sea. He had completely misjudged his altitude and the air was knocked out of him when his body slapped the water. The complete blackness and brutal chill made him nearly panic. As he kicked his way to the surface, he felt his arms being forced above his head as his LPUs inflated. Spitting and coughing, he found himself on the surface of the water gasping and sputtering for air. But what was this slimy sheet above him? It took a moment for him to realize that he had surfaced under the canopy of his parachute. Taking a deep breath, he ducked under the water and swam out from under the chute, being careful not to get himself tangled in its many canopy lines. Once he was clear, he released the parachute from his harness. The chute would soon become waterlogged and sink and he didn’t want to be strapped to it when it did.