MEDICINE, WARFARE, AND HISTORY — FULTON 439 



fast-flying jet plane and the possibility of using rockets for human 

 transportation. Even when planes were unable to fly at rates of more 

 than 200 to 300 miles per hour, acceleration had become a vital prob- 

 lem, especially in dive bombers, and in fighter aircraft that were able 

 to make fast turns. Now that jets are achieving speeds of 500 to 700 

 miles per hour, the need for protection from acceleration is vastly 

 increased. The pneumatic pressure suit developed by Capt. John Pop- 

 pen, USN (MC), Prof. F. A. S. Cotton in Australia, and Dr. Harold 

 Lamport in New Haven, Conn., and many others, has served to give 

 measurable and strategically significant protection for military pilots. 

 Such suits have proved of inestimable value, especially during the 

 D-day operations, and more recently for our fighter pilots in Korea. 



Design for safety. — During the war there were many instances in 

 which a fast-flying bombing plane crashed into a mountain side and 

 everyone on the plane, except for the tail gunner, was instantly killed. 

 Accidents such as this have stirred inquiry into the reasons for these 

 apparently miraculous survivals. They lie in the fact that the rear 

 gunner's head and the rest of his body were supported by solid struc- 

 ture at the time of the impact and in the fact that he was riding back- 

 ward. Those situated in a more forward position in a crashing airplane 

 are thrown from their seats because of insufficient strength of seat belts 

 and seat moorings, and according to the wartime report of Wliitting- 

 ham, director general of medical services of the R. A. F. (and now of 

 B. O. A. C), 95 percent of the deaths in air crashes result from head 

 injury, i. e., the head of the passenger is thrown violently against 

 solid structure. 



It became obvious, in view of episodes such as these, that rear-facing, 

 heavily moored seats would confer a degree of passenger safety at least 

 10 times as great as that which could be achieved with forward-facing 

 seats with fragile seat belts to hold the passenger in place in the event 

 of accident. The British public and airplane manufacturers have 

 already seen the virtue of rear-facing seats, and many of their new 

 passenger planes are so equipped. In the United States the resistance 

 on the part of both the flying public, and more particularly the air- 

 craft designers, has been so great that to date only Northwest Airlines 

 have seen fit to install rear-facing seats in commercial craft. 



The principles involved in the greater safety from rear-facing seats 

 are simple. If one falls to the ground and strikes one's head on soft 

 earth, the head is decelerated in a matter of a few tenths to one-half a 

 second ; the blow being thus softened, the accident victim may not suffer 

 concussion or unconsciousness. When, however, a person knocked off 

 a bicycle strikes his head on solid cement that does not yield, he may 

 suffer fracture of the skull, concussion, hemorrhage, and possibly even 

 death. In these circumstances the head is decelerated in a matter of 



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