A new display for a special object in the faculty’s heritage: the F-104 Starfighter ejection seat
On 24 October conservator Cormac Duggan from the TU Delft Library's Tailor-Made heritage team carried out a conservation cleaning on the F-104 Starfighter plane ejection seat next to the service desk in the Fellowship. Cormac and his colleagues are currently making an inventory of the faculty’s collection of heritage objects with the aim to conserve them and present some throughout the faculty. The ejection seat is part of the collection.
The story of the F-104
We’ve all seen it many times: the F-104 fighter aircraft ejection seat that stands right next to the service desk in the lobby of the Fellowship. The university Heritage Team and conservation expert Martin IJdo, who are currently making an inventory of the faculty’s heritage collection, noted that it’s a special seat and that it’s in excellent condition: completely intact and in original condition. All the more reason to give it a thorough cleaning and give it a better, more prominent display to reflect its historical value.
The Ejection Seat is the Martin Baker Q7 C-2 designed seat, an influential piece of engineering in ejection seat design. It was used in the Lockheed Martin F-104 Starfighter fighter a plane designed as a high flying and extremely fast air interceptor and also used as a low flying bomber by the a.o. the US and Dutch air forces during the Cold War. The safety record of the F-104 was very poor. Nicknames of the aircraft are for example ‘widow maker’ and ‘flying coffin’. The issues started when Lockheed Martin changed the intended function as a high flying extremely fast air interceptor into a low flying bomber the potential for disaster increased. Due to the requirements of the aircraft being used for low flying bombing runs resulted in carrying the extra weight of additional fuel tanks and nuclear bombs, this effected the flight characteristics dramatically. It resulted in the angle of attack changing without input from the pilot making the aircraft more unstable. In fact, the story of the Starfighter when considering safety in design is more how technology is implemented after the design and construction.
The Martin Baker Q7 C-2 ejection seat was a significant development in designing safe ejection seats, without these developments many more pilots' lives could have been at risk. What is revolutionary about the C-2 is that it was one of the first zero-zero ejection seats, allowing the pilot to eject even at low altitudes or during take-off. Previous ejection seats required the aircraft to be at a certain altitude to allow a safe release of the pilot. Early designs and one test aircraft of the F-104 had a downward ejection seat, thankfully the idea of a downwards ejection seat was left on the drawing room floor.
The Q7 ejection seat in the Fellowship is in excellent condition. Conservator Cormac Duggan of the TU Delft Tailor-Made Heritage Team has now given it a proper cleaning and given it a much better display. This is part of a wider project to conserve and display the faculty’s heritage.
