Martin Baker Ejection Seat

This seat, fitted to the SR.A/1 flying-boat, was the first seat to be supplied by Martin Baker to an aircraft manufacturer. Three seats of this type were supplied to Saunders Roe for the SR.A/1s and two to Armstrong Whitworth for the AW 52 "Flying Wing".

James Martin, (now Sir James, CBE) one of the founders of the Martin-Baker Aircraft company, started work on assisted aircraft escape systems before the Second World War. Research showed that the most suitable method was to fire the seat from the aircraft using a explosive charge. After many ground trials initial flight test were performed using a modified Defiant aircraft. This was followed by higher speed trials from a Meteor and led to the first live ejection.

The pre-production seat displayed here was produced and was followed by the Mark 1 which was produced in quantity for Attackers, Sea Hawks, Venoms, Wyverns etc. Since then the ejection seats of all British aircraft, with the exception of the Gnat which has a SAAB seat manufactured by Folland, have been made by Martin Baker and they have been adopted as standard by most western air forces (including the US Navy). Later marks of seat can be seen in the cockpits of the Vampire (Mk.3) Venom (Mk.4), Sea Vixen (Mk.4) and Swift.

Folland Ejection Seat

Folland needed a lightweight seat for the Gnat and they built this seat under licence from SAAB. The Gnat fighter on display has an early version of this seat and there is a later, production, version (Type GT.4) as used in the RAF's Gnat trainer displayed nearby.

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