FOX8:
FRANCE (CNN) — A surprise company outing to an air base caused a 64-year-old French man so much stress that he flung himself from a fighter jet in midair, grabbing the ejector button in a panic and tumbling through the skies above France before landing in a field. more
h/t Bruce.
Was he wearing the traditional brown pants of the French military?
Pilot to passenger: prepare to climb. Passenger: Au revoir.
Flying frog 🐸!!!
What man hasn’t had a premature ejection?
OMG! When you read the article you really get a feel for this man – so much pride he almost died.
I’ve been trying to think of something comparable for his next surprise but not coming up with anything close.
I bet he tossed his french fries too.
He spent more time flying through the air than the entire French Air Force in WWII.
@Ricky
Known as Pantalons Merde.
A Frenchman…from…Florida?
Did I use the wrong word?
PHenry
EJECTULATION.
He surrendered.
Thanks Bad Brad. I knew it was something like that.
Testiculation, the art of public expression, is not my strong suit.
Inspector Clouseau?
Kinda’ jealous….. I mean it’s not like they normally let you do that and get away with it without having to pay MANY THOUSANDS of dollars in damages and fines.
I’m not saying it was classy….. just seemed pretty fuggin’ awesome.
You’re all engaging in a postmature confabulation.
Jimmy….. they have rockets under those seats. Napoleon Jr. there got a hell of a bonus flight.
Aaron, so his premature ejectulation was actually a premature conflagration? I didn’t realize Frenchmen were capable of that.
Did he get to keep the ejector button that he grabbed? I can just see it; the first people on the scene as he landed in the field find him with a death grip on the button. Poor guy.
Speaking of electulation, this Joe Biden dude shot his wad early on, wouldn’t you say?
Uh, huh. Well-testiculated, Mr. PHenry.
“Tiens ma bière et regarde ça.”
@jimmy. It takes balls to say what I just said.
Tits not something I take lightly.
Well I REALLY liked the attached story…. about the pound cake and the twister.
…NEVER touch ANYTHING yellow and black in a cockpit unless you want to LEAVE it suddenly.
…problem is, Frenchmen are just naturally attracted to yellow…
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/713WwHVaBsL._SL1500_.jpg
First time I’ve heard of a Frenchman punch his way out of anything.
There is no “button”. He did something with vigor to cause that. Bet on it.
Was he wearing a mask and keeping his ‘social distance’??
With moves like that, how did the asshole manage to live into his 60’s?
That’s fucking hilarious.
@Lowell:
Exactly! there may be exceptions but I do believe an ejector seat activator is always a good-sized oval handle between your legs close to the seat bottom cushion, and it needs a very definite pull to eject.
For somebody in a panic, I can clearly see reaching down and finding a decent apparent hand-hold and hanging on for all you’re worth as almost natural.
Maybe the pilot shouldn’t have pulled the red REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT tag off and then arm the seat for an inexperienced passenger.
I’d chalk this up to pilot error.
OK. Now the real story about ejection vs ejaculation.
Back in the late seventies I married a nice woman that was the daughter of a B-17 pilot in WWII. He was a very serious and reserved gentleman. I was a dopey hippie wannabe.
I was going to college in Ridgecrest, CA outside China Lake Naval Weapons Center.
There was a drive-in movie venue outside of the base. We were at the movies.
There was a landing strip just Inside of the base.
Anyways.
While we were at the movie there was a huge midair collision between two aircraft and a shockwave and fireball the likes of which most will never witness.
I related the story to my father-in-law, but being a fledgling college student who was enamored with multi syllabic words, proving immense intelligence, I was able to report that both pilots EJACULATED in time.
Father-in-law said, with a straight face, that was good. But did they live?
A little while later I got the joke.
What a dope I was and I know old Hale had a hell of a laugh at my expense.
It sounds like the system had a fortunate malfunction. Seems like the pilot was supposed to have been ejected as well.
….I don’t know this particular aircraft, but a couple of common configurations are a device you pull over your head with both hands that covers it and fires the rocket, and another you pull from between your legs. These are designed to make you sit bolt-upright so you don’t break your neck when the rocket kicks in and shoves you through the slipstream, and they do require some force to activate as it’s generally considered both bad luck AND bad form to unexpectedly exit a combat aircraft during a dogfight.
But all I know was from a fire training program on aircraft we may have seen wrecked around mixed-use airports in the ’90s in the Midwest, and that a) didn’t include French fighters (French “fighters”, what an oxymoron) and b) wasn’t MODERN aircraft, and things may have changed in the last 30 years.
…plus, the extent of MY training was pretty much “See THIS? Do NOT pull it!”, so I don’t really know even from THEN how HARD the pull was, but I was told it wasn’t light…
What wasn’t mentioned in the article was the unusual brown contrail in the sky that appeared immediately after the incident.
@PHenry APRIL 14, 2020 AT 8:34 PM:
It’s not your fault; after have been at the drive-in, you probably had ejaculation on your mind as much as the mid-air collision.
On the next surprise company outing they plan on running naked through a mosque.
“Speak to me, Goose!”
“C’est le merde! Au bien tout!”
“Goose?”
Give the man a break. He thought he saw a German.
…it would have had a different ending if it’d been flying a bit lower and inverted, as I don’t believe the ejector rocket knows which way is “up”…