The drogue gun deployed clear of the turbulent air around the seat.
A small parachute approximately 2 feet in diameter opened behind Lynch.
Its drag helped stabilize the seat in a roughly horizontal attitude and reduce its speed.
After a controlled delay, the system transferred the drogue load to a much larger 24-foot parachute attached to the seat.
That larger parachute supported and further slowed the seat and occupant.
Only then did Lynch complete the final stages himself.
He had to unfasten his harness.
He had to push away from the seat.
Once clear, he had to pull the ripcord of his own personal parachute.
The seat descended separately under its recovery parachute.
The sequence sounds complicated because it was complicated.
Modern ejection seats can perform many of these stages automatically in seconds.
Lynch's experimental system still required a partnership between machine and pilot.
The machine would solve the impossible first problem.
It would get him out.
Lynch then had to finish saving himself.
The face screen was more than a shield
Another important feature was the firing control.
Martin-Baker used a face screen positioned above the pilot.
To eject, Lynch pulled the screen downward over his face.
The movement initiated the escape.
The design was clever because the same action accomplished several tasks.
First, it activated the ejection mechanism.
Second, reaching upward and pulling the screen encouraged Lynch to place his body into the correct posture. Martin-Baker specifically described the feature as helping square the spinal vertebrae for the launch.
Third, the screen covered the face before the seat entered the slipstream.
At more than 300 miles per hour, this was not a minor comfort feature.
The air blast itself could injure the pilot.
The screen gave the head and face some protection during the most violent transition from cockpit to open air.
The principle behind the mechanism would survive far beyond this first seat.
Good emergency equipment should not demand perfect behavior from a frightened person.
Where possible, the correct behavior should be built into the action required to use the system.
The firing control did not simply tell Lynch to sit properly.
Pulling it helped place him properly.
The machine was beginning to manage the human body as part of the escape sequence.
The modified Gloster Meteor became the flying laboratory
Once Martin-Baker believed the tower work had gone far enough, the company needed an aircraft.
A modified Gloster Meteor 3 was selected.
The choice was appropriate both technically and symbolically.
The Meteor had been Britain's first operational jet fighter. It represented exactly the new generation of aircraft that made assisted escape increasingly necessary.
The experimental seat was installed in the rear cockpit.
Another pilot occupied the front.
That arrangement offered a major advantage.
After Lynch left the aircraft, the Meteor could continue flying and return to the airfield.
Engineers could inspect the aircraft, recover equipment, study the results, modify the system, and use the same test platform again.
The aircraft did not have to be destroyed to test the seat.
The configuration also created a strange division of responsibility.
The front pilot's job was to maintain the aircraft under carefully planned conditions.
Lynch's job was to leave it.
Nothing about the Meteor needed to fail.
That was essential because engineers wanted to isolate the escape system from unrelated aircraft problems.
They needed to know that if something went wrong, the fault came from the test itself.
The planned flight therefore involved a perfectly functioning jet carrying one man whose job was to deliberately abandon it.