Posted on 03/20/2020 7:08:53 AM PDT by Lazamataz
The F-16, hit by the cannon fire, caught fire and exploded having recently been refuelled and made ready for a training sortie due to take place later that day. Another aircraft received minor damage.
If anyone ever needed a reminder of the lethal dangers of working with live munitions, then a recent incident at Florennes Air Base in Belgium is the ultimate wake-up call.
It is thought a maintenance worker accidentally activated the six-barrel 20mm Vulcan M61A-1 cannon hitting another plane parked on the runway.
No-one was in the line of fire, but two technicians were taken to the medical centre on the base suffering from noise related effects
(Excerpt) Read more at warhistoryonline.com ...
Scrap.
Looks like that plane landed. Poorly. :-)
The “glass half full” base commander actually THIS
“You can’t help thinking of what a disaster this could have been,” he said.
One of my dad's brothers-in-law was in a construction outfit in the Pacific during WWII. He was wounded twice by the Japanese because the areas he was clearing of jungle were not yet cleared of the enemy.
Anyway, one of those times, he was plugged in the fundament of his anatomy, and circumstances being what they were at the time, he somehow ended up convalescing in a famous Florida swanky hotel. He used to chuckle about how he got shot in in the ass while driving a bulldozer, was flown back to the US and got treated like royalty while convalescing at a millionaire's hangout.
I did not know him very well myself, but remember him as a character. When he came home on his first leave, he brought home snapshots of the New Guinea natives he was around, and they caused heartburn among the prudish set.
If they took $50 dollars out of his paycheck every pay period....
“Mechanic ‘Accidentally’ Fires Vulcan Cannon & Obliterates F-16 Sitting on the Runway”
Note that in the headline “Accidentally” is in quotes.
That’s like the time I broke the copier at the office, his manager will want to speak with him.
This happened in Oct of 2018. Former F-16 Crew Chief here....I’ve yet to see an official mishap report.
To be an accident, so many things would have to go wrong. Minimally, the aircraft would have to be armed (which is somewhat rare at home station), the ground safe pins would have to be pulled, and the weight on wheels interlock would have to be overridden.
Then, the trigger would have to be pulled.
John McCain?
Why? Did they not have their sheaths?
I worked on aircraft in the Air Force and there are a number of people I call “Button Pushers” who would push buttons just to see what they did.
Not my experience at all. What kind of "work" did you do in aircraft?
I wonder if he’ll get a “Bolo” badge for that
That’s what I thought too. But maybe not ...
In any case, this is a disastrous failure of trigger discipline.
I was wondering why this story sounded familiar. Event happened in mid October, 2018.
Don’t know if Belgian Air Force rules and regs are different than ours but in the USAF this could never happen. Our planes have all explosives downloaded before hangar entry.
Safeties are the the WOW (weight on wheels ) switch, clearing sector holdback tool, and an electrical safety pin.
Here’s the F-16 Hangar Entry Checklist;
I worked aircraft instrumentation. Fortunately, there weren’t too many of the “button pushers”, also known as “Bubba”, but they were there.
Nope. M61 A1 20mm Vulcan is standard armament on the F-16.
I'm thinking, since these are electricity-fired, static might serve instead of a trigger pull.
> It’s gonna be tough to live that one down...
Boy, you work as an aircraft mechanic for almost 20 years and do an exemplary job. Then one time, ONE TIME, you frag a plane and that’s it. From then on it’s always, “There’s Joe the plane fragger.”
I guess oops doesn’t quite cover this does it?
That payroll deduction to pay for the F 16 is gonna hurt for a while...
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