In 1974, I was going through flight training in the U.S. Navy. Part of the activities leading up to actual flight training is Sea Survival - what to do if your airplane is no longer with you and you are out in the ocean (remember, this is the Navy, they fly over water much of the time).
This particular drill consisted of going out into Escambia Bay off Pensacola, Florida on an old Landing Craft.
This was rigged with a tall platform on the back of the boat. We would be wearing the normal attire for a jet pilot who has just ejected from his aircraft and is splashing down in the ocean: flight suit, helmet, boots, G-Suit and torso harness with parachute risers attached to the torso harness.
You climb up onto the tower on the back of the boat and attach your parachute risers to the boat. You then jump off this tall platform (and of course off of the boat as well) on the back of this old boat which is going as fast as it can.
You hit the water and are them immediately being dragged by the boat (remember, you are attached to the bloody thing!).
This is to simulate having your parachute dragging you across the water. After all, you’re already having a really bad day. You’ve just abandoned a very expensive airplane at a very high rate of speed and are now in the ocean, which is probably cold and with your luck will have a high sea state and a 40 knot breeze.
If you don’t release the parachute, it may fill with water and drag you down.
The idea is you release the quick-release buckles on your torso harness to detach the parachute, or in this case the boat gleefully towing you along.
You are then to inflate your life vest, then your life raft, then climb into the life raft and wait for a helicopter to come pick you up out of the water.
You’ve practiced all of this stuff and you supposedly know how to do it all if you have gotten to this point. None of it is particularly difficult.
Except, …
They occasionally throw in a few wrinkles and or defective items to make you practice the backup plans. Supposedly, you’ll only get one surprise at most.
I had one quick-release buckle jam - that is not supposed to be able to happen. I had to get out my survival knife and saw through the risers on that side. Of course, I’d already released the first side so now I’m being pulled asymmetrically through the water by this boat to the great amusement of my classmates who have yet to be dropped off.
I finally get free, without losing my knife which is fortunately tied to my harness - after all I might need it to fight off a shark, and I will definitely need it for land survival training which starts as soon as they haul us out of the water.
(The Sea Survival people were actually quite annoyed with me later for doing this - they stated categorically that those buckles could not jam, that I must have just panicked and done something wrong. I said, OK, then you unbuckle it- I was still wearing it at the time. After they couldn’t unbuckle it they grudgingly said that it was probably OK for me to have destroyed government property - but that I was still going to have to fill out some paperwork. Think what happens if you actually lose the whole damn airplane!)
The next step is inflate my life vest. This should be a snap - just trigger the CO2 cartridge. Of course, my CO2 cartridge is a dud, so I have to blow it up with lung power. I did mention that I’m wearing a lot of gear, including flight boots and am treading water while doing all this, right?
Once that is done, it is time to inflate my life raft. Fate wouldn’t have given me two bad CO2 cartridges would it? NO! The cartridge for the little raft worked just fine. However, the raft had a hole in in and all the gas rapidly ran out. So, I had to patch the raft (yes, the patch kit was fine) and inflate it manually.
I then climbed into the life raft and was waiting for my helicopter pickup. The chopper just hoists you up into the air, you get to the chopper, they tap you on the head and you go back into the water, to be taken back to shore by the landing craft that brought you out.
I watch the helicopter do the hoisting routine with several classmates spread over a multi-mile distance (actually, I can see the helicopter in the air, I can’t see anyone else in the water, we are too far apart).
Finally the chopper is heading towards me. It gets about 400 yards away, emits a very large cloud of black smoke, sags in mid-air and heads back to the beach. It had one of its two engines just become quite ill.
I floated around for almost another two hours before a backup chopper came out.
That day gave me a very healthy respect for the possibility of multiple mechanical failures occuring in a single event cycle.