I've managed to find the "white paper" referenced by one of the commenters: Impact Acceleration Stress, 1961 [1]. There is also a feel-good propaganda movie that you can watch, detailing the program while missing out that they killed the bears [2], instead saying that they went under a "customary detailed examination".
One bear died while ejecting, as it was suffering from hydrocephalus (build up of spinal fluid in the brain) before flying, and with the added stress of the ejection must have caused terminal brain injuries. One bear suffered laceration to the liver, attributed to being over-sedated. At least one bear suffered whiplash and a fractured pelvis.
It doesn't specify exactly how many bears were used in testing, but I counted 7 from the tests they did (6 ejecting from the jet, one on a sled), plus one chimpanzee ejected form the jet. I highly doubt there were hundreds of bears, they cannot have been cheap to acquire or easy to keep.
All the animal test subjects were killed and autopsied afterwards.
Robert Sudderth, the Project Officer that commented, corroborates this paper, saying that the bears were not used a second time. John H Watson says that no bears were injured, but that could be just that he wasn't told.
[1] https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WTQrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA92&dq...
The number of seven bears fits the comment by Robert Sudderth but isn't a direct contradiction of the other comment by Lauren Anderson that says:
> 'Several hundred' bears were acquired for this purpose, all of which were destroyed 'in or after the testing process, by the testing process or by gun shot to the heart to preserve cranial damage from impacts'.
'Several hundred' and 'in or after the testing process, by the testing process or by gun shot to the heart to preserve cranial damage from impacts' are obviously quotes from the mentioned whitepaper and both make sense. The part between them is in my opinion a misinterpretation by the commenter. Given that the bears had to fulfill some obvious requirements (size and weight) and a lot of not so obvious ones (healthy, no previous injuries, etc.), it wouldn't surprise me if they acquired and examined several hundred bears for the project but ended up using only a few.
I believe the paper you linked to is not the one from the comment above because I couldn't find the quotes. It's also probably not the one describing the experiments in the original post. The original post talks about "The first live, inflight supersonic test of the escape capsule [which] took place on March 21, 1962". The experiments in the paper you linked took place in 1961 or before. The data it contains regarding the bears are measurements of drop test from various heights (9'9" to 14') and not data from in flight tests.
In that case, the centrifugal forces generated by the aircraft going into a spin meant that the second pilot, Carl Cross, waited just a few seconds too long to initiate the ejection sequence, and his seat was unable to be retracted into the capsule for ejection, so he ended up riding the aircraft all the way to ground impact.
[0] - https://tacairnet.com/2014/10/27/crash-of-the-valkyrie/
If you're at all interested in military or naval aviation, you should visit Wings Over the Rockies. It's like nothing else.
'''According to the government white paper on the subject all bears were destroyed shortly on return to base. All but the last three bears suffered serious internal injuries and multiple broken bones. 'Several hundred' bears were acquired for this purpose, all of which were destroyed 'in or after the testing process, by the testing process or by gun shot to the heart to preserve cranial damage from impacts'.'''
The USAF museum in Dayton Ohio has one of the escape modules on display (I saw it back in 2004-ish).
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-...
"Are you sure it's too drugged to move?"
"Yes"
"Its claw twitched... its humongous claw twitched."
"That's fine. Pick her up and strap her in."
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1676-5-horrifyin...
It's always ironic to see animal rights advocates' responses when they are asked if they'd rather volunteer to be the research subjects instead. They are surprisingly reluctant...
This tends to make them ponder a bit more:
"If we hadn't experimented on animals, you might not even be alive today."
1. How many animals have humans driven to extinction now? Perhaps they would not be extinct were people to treat them with greater respect.
2. If you treat an animal with respect the tables will never have an opportunity to turn, because you won't be blatantly trespassing on it's turf.
Edited to clarify: that wasn't a criticism.
Bear tests were probably more an early proof of viability than anything else. The bears survived, proving that humans wouldn't be completely annihilated.
Animal testing cruelty wasn't really being thought about heavily in post WWII military aerospace development. It's unfortunate but a historical footnote reminding us of the importance of proper testing.
Considering that the endpoint is machines killing actual people, it would be the height of hypocrisy in my books for them to care about "animal testing cruelty".
(Seriously, who said it has to be exactly "like" it? We use crash test dummies for testing car crash behavior, and they're nothing "like" humans either).
Maybe people were misconstruing "horrible science" as something other than low quality science? HN while being a seething pit of criticality, it has a low tolerance of anything that questions science or the march of technology.
