Eject! Eject!

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During 15 years service in the Royal Air Force John Nichol served as a technician and, after being commissioned from the ranks, as a Tornado Navigator in both the Air Defence and Ground Attack roles. The tales they told about, of course, being lucky to be alive were accompanied by lifelong disability and regrets like the poor young woman who would have loved to have been able to wear a skirt and a nice blouse - an option forever lost to her. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. He has served around the world from the Nevada Desert to the Middle East and Norway to the Falkland Islands. before Monday 22nd May to be entered into The Tornado Lottery, a chance to win a colour printed large-format 4 x 6 feet banner of John Nichol's previous book 'Tornado'.

The events in war, about the way the Vietnam pilots were treated for instance was beaten only by the dreadful, dreadful injuries that they used to receive as a result of ejecting. Nichol is perhaps at his best in his account of the early work of the Martin-Baker Aircraft Company, the pioneering British manufacturer of ejection seats, whose products – as of the date of publication – have saved 7,681 lives. I had the notion,” wrote Martin, “that I wanted to design things and not be employed by anyone” – a fine ambition. On active duty during the first Gulf War in 1991, his Tornado bomber was shot down during a mission over Iraq.We see how the technology was adapted when the prospect of crashing in North Vietnam was sometimes preferable to ejecting and risking capture; what happens to the body when it is catapulted from an aircraft under great force; how an ejectee can be rescued from enemy territory. As a final aside, I love the design of these books and how good they all look together on the shelf!

Out of the 4 books in the group I thought this would be the one I least enjoyed, but it was fascinating and told the stories of each ejection featured very well.There was clearly an urgent need for such a device: early aircraft escape techniques, notes Nichol, “were rudimentary at best: strap on parachute and jump.