Maintainers

Our Services

MAINTAINING EJECTION SEATS AROUND THE WORLD

Maintainers from VMFA-211 Squadron

Read their stories

Martin-Baker has immense pride in the maintainers working on our seat around the world – due to their hard work, dedicated and skill in servicing our ejection seats, we can proudly say that over 7,715 lives have been saved.

Read their stories below or submit one of your own and receive a Martin-Baker Maintainers Coin as a token of our appreciation.

SUBMIT A STORY

Maintainers from VMFA-211 Squadron

Ian Rose

I enjoyed four great years servicing Hawk, Hunter and Meteor ejection seats at RAF Brawdy in the 1980’s. Of all the postings I had, servicing ejection seats was the most enjoyable. It was made even more rewarding when a seat I serviced saved a life. As maintainers, we are so lucky to be able to play a small part in…

Richard Busby

I worked on the jaguars of 226 OCU at Lossiemouth, first line so fitting and removing Type 9b2 and 9b3 seats and associated fittings. The 9b3 I found easier with the headbox being removable for winching in and out on the scissor shackle. The unpleasant bit was being upside down to disconnect the static rods when someone had thrown up…

Cpl T A Hough

I serviced, maintained and fitted your ejection seats for the bulk of my 15 years as an Armourer in the Royal Air Force at both first-line and second-line levels. I worked on seats fitted to aircraft types including Phantom FGRII, Hawk, Tucson, Jet Provost, Hunter to name a few. My Phantom years at Wildenrath (92 Sqn) are the years I…

Elliot Dahlen

Eglin Egress is charged with the responsibility of ensuring the safety of F-35 pilots in the training pipeline. Our job could not be more important as these pilots are flying a new airframe and do not have the experience of thousands of flying hours. Each and every day our maintainers inspect, handle, and maintain US16E ejection seats for our pilots,…

Tom Hinchcliffe

After being promoted in 2009 I was posted to XV(R) sqn which at the time was the Tornado GR4 OCU. I had never worked on first line at the time and it was certainly an eye opener with around twenty aircraft out on the dispersal and a few more in the hangers. After learning the more simpler tasks on the…

Ian Rose

I enjoyed four great years servicing Hawk, Hunter and Meteor ejection seats at RAF Brawdy in the 1980’s. Of all the postings I had, servicing ejection seats was the most enjoyable. It was made even more rewarding when a seat I serviced saved a life. As maintainers, we are so lucky to be able to play a small part in…

Richard Busby

I worked on the jaguars of 226 OCU at Lossiemouth, first line so fitting and removing Type 9b2 and 9b3 seats and associated fittings. The 9b3 I found easier with the headbox being removable for winching in and out on the scissor shackle. The unpleasant bit was being upside down to disconnect the static rods when someone had thrown up…

Cpl T A Hough

I serviced, maintained and fitted your ejection seats for the bulk of my 15 years as an Armourer in the Royal Air Force at both first-line and second-line levels. I worked on seats fitted to aircraft types including Phantom FGRII, Hawk, Tucson, Jet Provost, Hunter to name a few. My Phantom years at Wildenrath (92 Sqn) are the years I…

Elliot Dahlen

Eglin Egress is charged with the responsibility of ensuring the safety of F-35 pilots in the training pipeline. Our job could not be more important as these pilots are flying a new airframe and do not have the experience of thousands of flying hours. Each and every day our maintainers inspect, handle, and maintain US16E ejection seats for our pilots,…

Tom Hinchcliffe

After being promoted in 2009 I was posted to XV(R) sqn which at the time was the Tornado GR4 OCU. I had never worked on first line at the time and it was certainly an eye opener with around twenty aircraft out on the dispersal and a few more in the hangers. After learning the more simpler tasks on the…