Why could a Sea Vixen crew fail to eject after hydraulic failure, and why might its wreckage take six days to find?
Short answerA low or inverted crash attitude can make ejection lethal, while fleet sonar optimized for moving submarines is poorly suited to finding scattered aircraft wreckage on the seabed.
NotesEjection seats cannot save a crew from every attitude and altitude; an inverted aircraft close to the surface may fire the seats directly toward the ground or water. After impact, the wreck can sink, scatter, and blend into the seabed. Sonar designed to detect large, moving submarines is not automatically effective at mapping small stationary debris, so recovery can take days even when the crash area is known.