Shot Into the Sky at 700 MPH: Inside the Secret Fraternity of Ejection Survivors

Ron Bath was flying his RF-4 Phantom military jet at nearly 700 miles an hour over the Nevada desert when it smashed into a bird, destroying one of the engines and part of the wing.

Ron Bath broke his neck and back after he was ejected from his jet nearly 40 years ago.Bath managed to land at his base in Reno, but there was still a problem: He couldn’t steer or apply the brakes. As the plane slowed, it rolled off the side of the runway and into a ditch filled with rainwater.

The Phantom’s front landing collapsed, piercing the floorboard under the cockpit and rupturing the charge on his ejection seat.

“Next thing I know is I’m looking down at my airplane and it’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, and I’m just shooting up into the sky,” said Bath. Seven seconds after he shot through the glass canopy, Bath smashed into the ground, breaking his back and neck.

A Martin-Baker ejection test at Chalgrove Airfield in Oxfordshire, U.K. VIDEO: MARTIN-BAKER

What he didn’t know on that day nearly 40 years ago was he had just earned entry into one of the world’s most exclusive clubs.

Much like the myth of automatically getting straight A’s if your college roommate dies, there is folklore around military pilots who eject from jets and live to tell. Can you keep your seat? Do you get a tie? A watch?

“We’ve all just heard rumors,” said Justin Grieve, one of two pilots to eject from the B-2 stealth bomber. “There was this guy one time that ejected and got X, Y or Z.”

A plane crash isn’t typically something to celebrate. But Martin-Baker, a British company that builds ejection seats for military planes, does exactly that. The company pushes out a social-media post every time one of its seats saves a life.

Then it contacts the ejectee and welcomes them to the tie club.

By Martin-Baker’s count, 7,827 lives have been saved by its seats since the first successful ejection in 1949.

One pilot has ejected four times, nine have ejected three times and 256 have ejected twice, according to Steve Roberts, a Martin-Baker executive. The four-timer was an Air Force F-4 reconnaissance officer.

When the company gets word of a successful ejection, it assigns the survivor a number. The pilot or crew member must contact the company and provide the date of their ejection and a description of the incident.

If it checks out, Martin-Baker ships off what has been the prized symbol of membership since the club launched in 1957: a navy blue silk tie with red triangles resembling the logo painted on the sides of jets warning there’s an ejection seat in the cockpit. The gift includes a membership card with the unique ejection number along with a certificate, patch and pin.

Ejectees often wear their ties at airshows and other military functions, like a way cooler version of a fraternity sweater.

Martin-Baker expanded club privileges in 2009 after British watchmaker Bremont designed the MBI, a silver watch with red trim, for its members. The company will etch members’ tie-club number on the back of the barrel along with their name or call sign and ejection date.

The tie is free but the watch is not. The retail value is about $5,000, but they’re sold at cost to ejection survivors. Often, pilots will chip in and buy one for their colleague.

It wasn’t until years after his ejection that Bath, then a major general working at the Pentagon, received a phone call in his office. The caller had a British accent and was offering the Bremont watch, as long as Bath provided a credit card to cover the tax.

“I thought it was a scam,” said Bath.

After contacting Martin-Baker, Bath was informed the offer was legitimate. Six months later, a leather box arrived with his personalized MBI.

He’s never worn it in public. “It’s a gorgeous thing. I’d be afraid to wear it,” said Bath, who prefers a $150 Glycine Airman he bought at a base exchange.

A watch collector once offered him $12,500 for the MBI, but he intends to pass it down to his daughter.

Collins Aerospace, another maker of ejection seats, started its own ejection fraternity in 1979. Called the Grasshopper Club, members get a plaque, patch, pin and a coin.

Collins’ seats have saved 730, including several Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle pilots and crew shot down this year in Iran.

The club went somewhat dormant, but has been reinvigorated in recent years by Rob Makros, a retired Air Force pilot who has several friends who are alive because of their ejection seats.

One of them is Grieve, whose B-2 bomber crashed while taking off from Guam in 2008.

Pilots of the stealth plane would joke that if you tried to eject, a person would appear on the screen, wagging their finger and saying: “You’re not ejecting out of a $2.2 billion airplane. Get your butt back in here.”

Grieve, like Bath, broke his back when his plane shot him out. Both recovered fully and returned to flying.

Both Martin-Baker and Collins regularly host club members at their plants. After retiring from the Air Force and flying for the airlines, Grieve went to Collins’ factory in Colorado to meet seat makers and talk about his ejection.

“To go out and kind of do the tour and meet the people and you know tell the stories…it was really cool,” Grieve said. “High-fives all around.”

Write to Marcus Weisgerber at marcus.weisgerber@wsj.com