When Jo Lancaster, the first British pilot to eject in an emergency, triggered his ejection seat in 1949, it took thirty seconds before he was safely away from the aircraft & under his parachute. Since those first post-Second World War ejections, many tens of thousands of lives have been saved by increasingly sophisticated escape systems. When John Nichol’s Tornado was blasted out of the sky during the 1991 Gulf War, a mere 2.5 seconds elapsed between pulling the ejection handle & his parachute opening. Today, the newest seats can automatically initiate ejection if the system decides the pilot faces mortal danger & cannot react quickly enough. Now, Nichol tells the incredible story of the ejection seat in war & in peace – of the pioneers who risked everything during the early days of development in the 1940s & 50s, of the designers who went head to head with the authorities in order to realise their vision, & of the extraordinary men & women who were given a second cha...