US Missile Expert Died from the Bends in High-Altitude Test

Newsweak ^ | 4/16/2024 | Daniel Orton

[logi_cal869]

A 33-year-old civilian missile specialist died of decompression sickness, also known as the bends, caused by a high-altitude test flight on a U.S. Air Force jet, a report has revealed.

The specialist, assigned to the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), who had recently had COVID-19, was onboard a C-17 aircraft during a missile-testing mission near Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, on August 21, 2023. The report into the mishap was released by the U.S. Air Force on Friday.

The employee, who has not been named, fell ill shortly after the unpressurized simulated airdrop portion of the mission. One crew member said the missile specialist was "having difficulty even standing up" and "looked like a guy that had been drinking all night."

[logi_cal869]

My dad, an Air Force fighter pilot, got the bends in the early ‘60s when his F101 Voodoo cockpit had a catastrophic depressurization. They put him in the hyperbaric chamber and he walked out good as new.

That is EXACTLY what I would have expected from this case.

The incompetence of the USAF medical corpse is rather appalling.

[jagusafr]

It’s certainly gone downhill since I was the hospital attorney at Wilford Hall USAF Medical Center in the early to mid-90s.

Colonel, USAF JAGC (Ret)

[ridesthemiles]

MORE VAX issues.

[Paal Gulli]

"bends originally were discovered due to working inside pressurized coffer dams...."

And originally it was called "Caisson's Disease," because that was the term they used for the coffer dams.

[Paal Gulli]

...U-2 and SR-71 pilots wore suits to flush nitrogen from their bodies before high altitude or space flights....

Wrong.

It's called a "pressure suit" for a reason. You wear them to prevent your blood from boiling at high altitudes (see "Armstrong Limit," below). Breathing pressurized oxygen is what purges the nitrogen from their bloodstream.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_limit

[Paal Gulli]

...Sounds like he was in no condition to do any unpressurized flights. More likely to be sudden onset of high altitude sickness, which can include brain swelling, pulmonary edema and pulmonary clots....

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner:

"...The Medical Examiner declared it an accidental death, caused by "decompression sickness with contributing factors of obesity, hypertension, and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, ...

He had health problems just looking for the opportunity to kill him. The test flight gave them what they had been waiting for.