How do fighter pilots go to the toilet? Pissing at 700 mph and the art of supersonic shitting

A fighter pilot reveals the magic of transonic toilets

So, that thorny issue of needing the toilet whilst airborne. Imagine the scenario - you’re strapped to a live ejector seat, wearing multiple layers of thermal undergarments, all under a zipped up dry suit, and suddenly Mother Nature calls. Not the best place for her to come a knocking I can assure you. But if you’re lucky, and the cause is because of one too many coffees that morning, those boffins I mentioned have given you a plastic bag with a sponge in it. Yes, that’s right, a sponge in a bag (other solutions are available, but all operate in a similar fashion). And forgive me at this point because I’m a bloke.

And I know there are female fighter pilots, but I’m not even going to begin to guess how they solve this problem of all problems, so maybe one of them can get in touch with Husk-Kit and offer an addendum to this. Anyhow, so now that the problem has been identified against the much worse alternative (we’ll get to that soon, don’t worry), in short - and it’s in having been caught short that we’re in this scenario in the first place - to start with, the ejection seat has to be made safe. Not a comfortable situation to be honest when trained to only have the seat live from the start of a flight to the end of it, but a necessity when you’re about to unstrap and do some serious rummaging around down there. After that, it’s now a case of keeping the aircraft under control whilst letting go of the controls. This sounds obvious, but not all fighters have an autopilot in the same way that airliners do - the Jaguar had nothing at all, whilst the Harrier at least did have a rudimentary one that could hold a height and a direction or aircraft attitude (where its nose was pointing, not the passive, assertive, aggressive sort). And it’s this rudimentary system that’s bolted on to fighters in most cases. So, at least you’ve got a fighting chance of not ending up in a spiral descent to Earth whilst doing all of this. Next is the unstrapping, unzipping, searching, adjusting, and general struggle to get somewhere close, ideally into the top of the bag, and ahhhh, that’s better. Reverse the above process, and you’re as good as new and ready to splash some more MiGs (notwithstanding, you’ve probably already splashed your gloves, g-suit, seat cushion, and side consoles……..)

And so to the totally different and less than desirable problem Number 2 (defecation or shitting), I think it’s fair to say that this is a much rarer occurrence based on the human body’s ability to regulate solid waste disposal in a far more predictable and less frequent fashion. But it still happens. Not to me during my time, thank goodness, but I’ve heard some horror stories. And the horrific reality is that unless you’ve been trained in the special forces technique of depositing into a plastic bag under a hedge in some bleak corner of a foreign land where knocking on a pub door and asking where the facilities are is not an option, you’re ill-prepared for pooing (there, I said it) into a sick bag, inflight ration cardboard box - if you’re ‘lucky’ enough to even have one - or, and I’ve heard it done, a flying glove. This is truly an awful situation to be in, one that demands an individual response, but I’ll leave you with the story I heard about a poor Tornado navigator who faced this exact problem. Asking his pilot to divert to the nearest suitable airfield, which the pilot duly did as quickly as his little Tornado legs could carry him, the navigator legged it towards the nearest toilet once parked, only to slow to a snail’s pace as nature simply cried ‘enough’. Poor fellow. But I think he was probably grateful for being all zipped up in a dry suit at the moment of stores release. I heard that those around him at the time were certainly grateful that hazardous waste containment had taken place.

So there you go. You did ask!

Matt Doncaster