Particularily on Bowser's post about the number of "wrecks".

"Martin-Baker has manufactured over 68,700 seats since they began in 1947. As of today, just over 6,900 lives have been saved with Martin-Baker seats. That works out to approximately 1 in 10, or 10%, of our seats that are used in an emergency ejection from an aircraft."



10% seems like a lot. If 10% of all seat belts saved lives, that would be a bunch of wrecks.



Let's see, what could've caused so many "wrecks" between 1947 and today? How about little incidents like the Korean and Vietnam Wars?

Here are some sketchy numbers from the Korean war:

FEAF aircraft losses in air-to-air combat have been far fewer than to enemy ground fire. Overall losses to ground guns were 619, compared to 106 air-to-air, as of mid-April, 1953.

Here are some numbers from various sources listing combat losses in Vietnam:

From this Air University article:

More than half (397) of the 753 F-105Ds and Fs built were lost in the war.

In all probability, not all of those losses resulted in ejections. Still, that one plane's unfortunate combat record accounts for a significant percentage of all ejections in the war.

This source, while unverified at this time, lists combat losses over North Vietnam alone as follows:


USAF
F-105 --282
F-4 --192
F-100 --16
F-102 --1
F-104 --4
F-111 --6 (ejection capsule instead of seats)
RF-101 --27
RF-4 --37
B-52 --17
C-130 --2 (no ejection seats)
EB-66 --4
B-57 --5
RC-47 --1 (no ejection seats)
A-1 --18 (no ejection seats)
T-28 --1 (no ejection seats)
O-1/2 --5 (no ejection seats)



USN
A-4 --173
A-6 --52
F-4 --73
A-7 --38
RF-4 --1
F/RF-8 --18
A-3 --1
RA-5 --21
A-1--43 (no ejection seats)



This source lists combat losses over North Vietnam from 1965 through 1968 as 922 aircraft. Another page from the same source lists Phantom II losses in Southeast Asia (1965-1973) as 511 planes, with almost 500 of them being lost in combat, collisions, crashes, etc.)

Of course, not all of these planes used Martin-Baker ejection seats. There were also quite a few crashes during training and routine operations since 1947. Still, war has a tendency to increase the loss rate, at least the wars in Korea and Vietnam did.