questions about pilots ejected out of plane on crash

[Flyingkag]

Hey guys,

I was astonished, searching on some pilots destinies, to find exactly the same kind of WWII witnesses statements about 3 histories;

In these 3 histories, the planes (2 x P-47, and one P-51) crashed with a nearly horizontal approach (as if trying belly landing), and hit the ground "scratching it" first, then coming "ass over head (180° turn over the propeller) and being totally destroyed, scattered in many thousands part along a very long path (200 meters long triangular dispersion of parts).

In all these cases, the pilot was found in "one piece", not burned, and two of them were described with no evident sign of violence, "as if he was sleeping", laying on the side, or face against ground, "with NO visible wound, neither blood on face etc... (but IDPFs showed they had had many many - deadly - fractures, and fatal internal bleeding of course)

I always asked myself how it was possible they were ejected out of their plane, if seat belt and shoulder harness were still locked. Is it possible?

Would logically - as I imagine - the pilot be ejected IN FRONT OF the plane as it makes its 180° turn on crashing, (as with a catapult) so that the pilot is found in the middle of the plane parts, about 50 meters ahead the main impact point, in the axis of the trajectory of the crashing plane?

Would logically the pilot be ejected THROUGH the canopy in such a scenario, or would the canopy be ejected forward to, so that the pilot doesn't hit it? I guess he would have been hardly wounded on head and would have been bleeding on face if ejected through the canopy?

Not a very funny subject, I confess, but I would be interested to have your point of view about it.

Thanks for any help, Mathias

[RSwank]

You may be making some assumptions that might not be correct. In this video of a P-51 making a belly landing, it appears to me that that canopy has been moved back, i.e. to the "open" position before the plane makes the belly landing. Perhaps that was the standard procedure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze2nEipDLR0

The second assumption is that the seat and shoulder straps were still closed (which I believe is the correct procedure for a belly or water landing). But what if the pilot first planned to bail out and then changed his mind, e.g. he was too low. I doubt he would re-connect the seat and shoulder belts if he had already released them. There probably was no time to do something like that. So I think it possible that in the examples given the canopy was retracted ( if not already ejected) and the belts may have been released. When the plane flipped over the pilot could have been thrown clear and then suffered a broken neck or massive internal injuries when he hits the ground.

[Flyingkag]

Thanks for your so interesting answers, Rswank!

You're probably right about fact that the harness etc...had been released earlier; I guess it happened probably so in my both histories, the pilots having had the idea to bail-out, but both planes being to low for making it successfully; sure they had no time in such a stressing situation for e-connecting them again...

The belly landing video is very interesting for me, and I can better imagine how violent it was as "my" Mustang crashed "slowly",( nearly horizontaly), in the forest, hitting the trees, then hitting the ground and flipping over...

Thanks once more for your so precious help! Mathias