“THANK YOU DOCTOR STAPP”

(We interrupt our regularly-scheduled stories to bring you this Special Feature. Standard articles in this series will resume next month.)

“This is not going to be survivable”, I thought in that final split second before impact, “and I never said goodbye to my family.” Then, like something out of “The Twilight Zone”, it happened. That sickening sound of shattering glass, ripping metal, screeching tires, and the explosion of a two-stage airbag as it catches your face and prevents it from smashing through the windshield. I actually watched the hood of my car fold in half in about a tenth of a second. Then, amidst the adrenaline, the shock, and the acrid smell of gun powder, your senses slowly return as you see other drivers pulling over to help as they begin running towards what’s left of a 2006 Infiniti G35.

Through the smoky haze I carefully felt my face and couldn’t believe my glasses were intact. I was aware of an odd tingly sensation in my left arm, and then suddenly good kind people were at the driver’s window asking if I was alright. Incredulously I was, as were the occupants of the other vehicle. After a substantial high-speed, high-energy collision between two automobiles weighing a combined total of nearly four tons, there was no fire, there was no major injury, and incredibly, there was no death. Before the advent of modern legislated automotive safety technology, however, this story would have been dramatically different, but somehow we were alive and well. So how was this possible?

While early safety devices such as tempered glass and hydraulic brakes date back to the Classic Car era of the late-1920s, the quest for safer modern automobiles began indirectly during the summer of 1947 at what is now Edwards Air Force Base, California. A young Air Force Flight Surgeon named Capt. John Paul Stapp had been stationed there after World War II and was conducting experiments to study the effects of deceleration on the human body. As aircraft speeds and performance increased with the advent of the jet age, so did the hazards associated with crash survival and high-speed escape. Dr. Stapp bravely embarked on a personal quest to solve the technical problems that were killing pilots in aircraft crashes and high-speed ejections.

Beginning by riding in seats dropped from modest heights, Stapp subjected himself to the rigors of deceleration. Films of these tests show his head snapping forward and his helmet flying off from the jarring impacts but he persevered, gathering valuable research data in the process. Taking it to the next level, he began a series of rocket sled runs using anthropomorphic dummies to gain more data on the effects of stronger deceleration forces, finally riding the sleds himself to validate further advances in the design of complex restraining devices. Blazing down the track in a Northrop-built sled aptly named the “Gee Whiz”, Stapp reached speeds of 150 mph before hitting the braking system and experiencing the force of up to 25 times the normal pull of gravity. By the early-1950s, however, the life-saving benefits of these experiments began to manifest themselves in noticeably improved survival rates for pilots ejecting out of stricken aircraft.

Although he sustained numerous injuries, Stapp kept raising the bar on his sled tests until he performed the grand finale of his career at Holloman AFB, New Mexico in December 1954. Strapped to the seat of an advanced two-stage Northrop sled named “Sonic Wind”, he rocketed to a speed of 632 mph before hitting the water brake and stopping in only two hundred feet. His body sustained a crushing 46.2 Gs, or 46 times the force of gravity, well above the 18-Gs previously thought to be the limit for human endurance. Temporarily blinded and internally injured, Stapp had risked it all to prove that with proper restraining devices, man could indeed survive. His later involvement with the Society of Automotive Engineers led to the first seat belts made available in cars in the early-1960s and by the end of that decade even more impressive aerospace safety technology was making its way into automobiles manufactured throughout the world.

So how does all this relate to a website about vintage models? Simple. In 1959 I was one of the winners of a promotional competition held by Aurora Plastics Corporation called the “Dream Kit Contest”. In a brilliant marketing move, the forward-thinking model manufacturer announced that it wanted its very own clients – us young model builders – to decide which Aurora kits would be produced in the future. All you had to do was fill out the entry blank and explain in 25 words or less why your choice of model should be made. Oh yes, you also had to send in the box end panel from any Aurora product. In this way, the company could not only solicit valid concepts for future products, but sell a boat-load of models at the very same time.

My entry was for a model of Col. Stapp’s rocket sled, because of its valuable contribution to aviation safety. Imagine my excitement at seeing an envelope arrive in the mail a few weeks later with the return address of 44 Cherry Valley Road, West Hempstead, L.I., N.Y. (No ZIP Codes back then)! I’d won 22nd prize out of 300, a cool-looking pool table for the basement playroom. Although my rocket sled kit was never produced, can you imagine what that box art might have looked like? There was even a chase plane following Col. Stapp’s final run at Holloman that day, so think of an Aurora cover painting by Jo Kotula dramatically showing the red-and-white sled coming right at you and hitting the water brake at 600 mph with huge plumes of white spray cascading into the air while the silver T-33 screams by 50 feet overhead!

I wish I had that kit up on my model shelf today, for the safety devices that quite literally saved my life began to take form on all those research sleds first used back in the late-1940s. In 1966, an Experimental Safety Vehicle designed by Republic Aviation Corporation directly connected advanced aeronautical safety engineering with modern automobile design, and by 1986, it became mandatory that all cars be equipped with air bags, high-mounted rear brake lights, side-filling fuel tanks, and many other significant advances first shown on Republic’s revolutionary prototype car. I now owe my life to the development of those devices, as do the approximately 20,000 people saved every year in automobile accidents that would have proved fatal only several decades ago.

No, I may not have won First Place in Aurora’s “Dream Kit” Contest, but thanks to Dr. Stapp’s courageous and pioneering work coupled with my car’s composite front-end structural components, pre-tensioning and energy-releasing seat belts, break-away foot pedals, active headrests, and an airbag that calibrated the force of its deployment with specific data for my own body weight, I emerged from that crash with only a fractured left hand and minor bruises. In the grand scheme of things, I’d say I won the jackpot.