So I waited till about 2,000 feet,
which is where I pulled the handle.
And I had about less than a second left to live.
Narrator: That's Lt. Col. Pete Smith,
an Air Force veteran who spent his
28-year military career as a fighter pilot
and has experienced an ejection firsthand.
In TV and movies,
a fighter pilot ejecting from their jet
comes across as a cut-and-dry procedure.
In reality, the process is complicated, violent,
and leaves most pilots with severe injuries.
About 20% to 30% of fighter pilots
experience some sort of spinal fracture as a result.
But in most cases, ejection-seat technology
is the difference between life and death.
So, how exactly does this technology work,
and what is it like to experience an ejection?
It is a complex question.
And as a matter of fact,
the ejection seat's probably the most complex
piece of equipment within a fighter jet.
As soon as you pull the handle, at zero seconds,
the first thing that's going to happen
is you just send a signal
to essentially start the process of ejecting.
Narrator: This handle, which sits between
the pilot's legs, sends an electrical impulse
to the aircraft to release the bolts
holding the cockpit's canopy in place.
A set of small rockets in the front
then push the canopy up and out of the pilot's way.
Then an explosive cartridge underneath the seat
goes off to catapult the pilot out of the cockpit.
This initiates the seat's rocket boosters,
which propel the pilot 100 to 200 feet upward.
Sensors within the seat measure the plane's speed
and the ambient air pressure to determine
whether the pilot is at a low altitude
and the parachute needs to be deployed immediately,
or whether they're at a higher altitude
and the parachute needs to be delayed
until they reach thicker air.
In the latter case,
the seat will still deploy a smaller chute,
known as a drogue, which helps lower the pilot's
rate of descent and stabilize the seat
from careening into a deadly spin.
Once the main parachute is deployed,
a motor automatically fires,
finally releasing the pilot from the seat.
This entire process exerts 14 to 16 times
the force of gravity on fighter pilots' bodies.
If you have time to prepare, you want to prepare.
And the best thing to do in preparation for
ejecting out of one of these with one of these seats
is you want to be in position.
And getting in position is to try and make yourself
skinny and stiff and straight.
Because you gotta remember,
this thing's going to go up the rails.
It's a catapult, and it's going to fire you up
about 50 feet per second,
and then a rocket's going to go off.
And depending on where you are and what seat you're in,
it's 5 to 20 g's going up those rails.
And within two to four seconds,
depending on what mode of flight you're in,
you're going to have a full parachute.
Once you're in a full chute, the game's not over yet.
Those are things that come into the survival piece
once you're in a chute.
Am I in training? Am I in combat?
And also in that is kind of an awareness
of what you can expect.
Am I in the Himalayas with mountains at 20,000 feet?
I might have to do that man-seat separation
on my own.
Narrator: In 2007, Smith had a harrowing experience
while practicing a high-risk flight maneuver
during training off the coast of Florida.
So, essentially, I was low and high speed.
I was spatially disoriented,
we were fighting over the water at night,
and I essentially had rolled this thing inverted
and didn't even notice from the visual cues outside
that that's what happened to me.
Passing 6,000 feet, I made the decision to continue.
We're supposed to get out if we're out of control
at 6,000 feet, but I decided to hang with it.
And I'm trying to slow down,
'cause I was already through 600 knots.
Narrator: That's an incredible speed.
600 knots is equivalent to 690 miles per hour.
Smith: Essentially, if you're above 500 knots,
it's about a 90% fatality.
Either you're going to get some kind of
flailing injuries, or you could snap the neck,
or you can, there's lots of things
that can go wrong at that high speed.
The slower, the better.
180 knots is, like, the perfect speed.
So I waited till about 2,000 feet,
which is where I pulled the handle.
And I had about less than a second left to live.
I went out around 400 miles an hour.
And for me, what I will say about any ejection,
I don't care how slow or how fast or how,
it's extremely violent.
To this day,
I can remember my body position when I went out.
Because it snapped me
back to the right.
It was taking the air out of my lungs.
So [groaning].
It was like you fell out of a tree
and got the wind knocked out of you
type of thing.
The whole thing was less than nine seconds,
from recognition to in the water.
For me, I was about 60 miles offshore,
but it was pitch black out,
and I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face.
I did have injuries, but you don't know it
because you have so much adrenaline
pumping through your body.
Narrator: It wasn't until after being rescued
about an hour later by a Navy helicopter
that Smith would discover he had herniated disks
in his neck and back
as well as a torn ACL and MCL.
Despite the physical dangers,
advancements in technology have led
to an average 90% survival rate
in all types of ejections.
And according to Smith,
the most dangerous obstacle that remains is hesitation.
The one thing that can get in the way is this,
you know, and that decision.
Do I go now? Do I go later?
Do I try to save the jet?
That's where you get yourself in trouble.
You just gotta know,
and that's why we have these rules.
You know, if something goes wrong,
I can't hesitate. I gotta go.
You've got to be willing to pull that handle.
You know what I'm saying? And trust it.