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Agreed. There are a lot of things in life I wish I had a chance to do, but riding an ejection seat out of a out of control aircraft is near the bottom of the list.

We had a pilot in my squadron who was killed when he ejected right off the flight deck (a failed catapult shot) and ended up in the drink alive, and they tried to rescue him with a swimmer for about a half hour, to no avail. He was hopelessly tangled in his parachute shrouds. I guess they call them that for a reason.

In front of the entire flight deck crew and ships company, he drowned right in front of our eyes...they finally got him out and brought him aboard doing CPR the whole way, to no avail.

That has to be very disheartening to observe. Our parachutes don't come with a cutter for the shrouds. I may have to bring a Kabar just in case. The life vest provided for pilots with an ejection seat is supposed to auto-inflate in case the pilot is unconscious. The "horse collars" we use are manual so we can perform underwater egress. Ditto for the ones on the helicopters.

My dad was on the Randolph (aircraft carrier) early in his career. He hated the blast deflector that spewed all over the bridge. He directed his staff to install the other blast deflector to point away from the bridge. Success. That became the Navy standard installation.