"588" wrote in message
.com...
W. D. Allen wrote:

A really compelling story! Could it have been that with fire under the
front
cockpit deck when the rear seater ejected the airflow around the aft
cockpit
caused the flames to be sucked up through the front cockpit?

Clearly so.

A fighter-pilot General he may have been and a significant loss to
that community, but it is worth noting that respect for the
Company-grade basics may have brought him home with his back-seater
instead of incinerating him where he sat. In the cockpit, a little
more thought about what fire does can be far more useful than all
the nicer aspects of Generalship.

I wish I had a copy of Dick Rutan's original unedited tape. ;


Jack


why would a "fighter pilot General" be debating a point that
was (in terms of task prioritization) largely ridiculously
irrelevant, given the situation at hand ?

"He said the General did not want to eject and argued about the
position of the command ejection handle in the rear cockpit. The
Major, upholding his duties, wanted it in the Command position ( the
guy in back Command ejects the front.)

But the General outranked him and ordered him to leave it in the OFF
position, thereby making each seat a single-initiated ejection".