Pressurized Pilots

In the bar of a stateside officers' club one evening last week, a fighter pilot home from Korea was describing the war in the air. Using the gestures that all flyers use on the ground, he nosed over into a steep dive and pulled out sharply. Then something went wrong with the pressure valve in his G-suit, he said. The five air pads took a full blast and "it socked me in the belly like a barroom punch." But the pilot was not complaining. Without the G-suit, he could not have stayed in the same air with a Russian MIG.

Even before the end of World War II, G-suits were standard equipment for the well-dressed fighter pilot. Yesterday's Mustangs and Thunderbolts, fighting a far lower speed than today's jets, were fast enough so that in tight turns or quick pullouts a pilot was sometimes subjected to more than four times the pull of gravity--in airmen's language, four Gs. And at 4.2 Gs the average man begins to "grey out." Blood drains from his head. His sight begins to blur. At more than five Gs, he may black out completely.

So that pilots could continue to function in the maneuvers of high-speed combat, the Navy and Air Force developed G-suits--nylon coveralls with air bladders mounted at the abdomen, thighs and shins. All five bladders are interconnected, and, in the cockpit, they are attached to an air pump. The flow of air to the G-suit is regulated by a weighted valve spring. The same G forces that tug at the pilot move the valve spring. As air is admitted to the G-suit, its bladders become tourniquets, preventing the blood from pooling in, the blood vessels of legs and belly.

Flying at 550 m.p.h. without a G-suit, a pilot could black out in a one-mile turn. But the best jets in Korea whip along far faster than that, and can fly smoothly through tighter turns. With a G-suit, the jet jockey can fight his plane to the limit. He can take the seven Gs developed in a 4,000-ft. turn at 650 m.p.h.

Like the oxygen mask, the pressure cabin, electrically heated flight gear and the ejection seat, the purpose of the G-suit is to match the pilot to his high-speed environment. The fact is that the fragile human frame is fast becoming the structural limit to the speed of aircraft. Aircraft designers are already talking of interceptors that will scream through the upper atmosphere at more than 1,500 miles an hour. They are sure that one of their toughest problems will be to beef up the pilot so that he can stand the trip.

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