What is the fastest ejection on record?
Although this seems to be an easy question, looks can be deceiving. ‘How fast’ is an imprecise question as it can be answered in several ways, for example: speed over ground, Knots Indicated Air Speed (KIAS), Knots Equivalent Air Speed (KEAS) and so forth. For example, some SR-71 pilots are rumored to have ejected at speeds of Mach 3 at 80,000 feet. This is a ground speed of around 2000 miles per hour, yet due to the thinner atmosphere at that altitude, the speed is closer to 400 KEAS. That is more like a 460 miles per hour. An F-15E pilot survived an ejection at a very small ground speed as he was traveling almost straight down in a spin, yet he was traveling at 780 MPH. This is over 1.6 times faster in equivalent air speed. Another difficulty with answering this question is determining the exact speed. Since most ejections occur in situations that are changing rapidly, it is difficult to get an exact speed of the ejection. Most ejection speeds are calculated values based on the recol
