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That’s right, folks. If you’ve ever felt a pang of outrage at dancing circus bears, get ready to see red.
Though humans were used to test ejector seats in planes going subsonic speeds, they didn’t have a whole lot of volunteers to give it a shot going at supersonic ones.
That’s where the bears came in.
Yogi was the first to take flight (after being sedated because there weren’t many volunteers for opening a capsule containing a bear that’s just been shot out of a plane, either) and made bear history on March 21, 1968, unharmed. Unfortunately, he wasn’t allowed to go back and brag to his friends in the forest, because the Air Force needed to check if any damage had been done internally after being launched going Mach 1.3 at 35,000 feet.
Tests continued at increasing speeds and using a variety of animals, yet that’s how the ejector seat was given the go ahead for those guarding our airspace.
Here’s a video of the project (and, no, there’s not a bear attack in it):
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