Posted on 04/12/2008 12:33:55 PM PDT by Calpernia
Jefferson Township, N.J. (1010 WINS) -- A piece of artillery that was apparently misfired by the military crashed through the roof of a home miles away Friday and injured a young girl's cat, which had to be euthanized, officials said.
No people were injured when the 2-pound piece hit the Jefferson Township home about 2 1/2 miles from the Picatinny Arsenal and landed in the girl's bed, said Peter Rowland, arsenal spokesman. She wasn't home, but her cat was sleeping on the bed.
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Whoever was the safety officer for that shoot has gotta be crapping in his or her pants right about now.... IIRC, the story was that when a round from Ft. Sill was 1800 mils out of safe and landed in Lawton, the safety officer ended up as a guest of the government in Leavenworth. Of course, that's the famous incident where a 240mm howitzer round landed in the intersection of Sheridan and Gore in the '50s.
We lived at Picatinny Arsenal for a number of years ... army brat here.
Training round?
28:06:42:12
You have to admit hitting a sleeping cat in a house from 2 1/2 miles away is no easy feat to be sure! ;-)....................
Thats a hell of a shot. Difficulty factor way up there due to additional kentucky windage needed for roof deflection.
Which is why it was still called "The Impact Area" in 1967, when I went to OCS at Sill.
Stupid reporting. THey say the cat was sleeping on the bed, the artillery piece landed in the bed, but don’t say if the cat was okay or not. Idiots. That’s the most interesting piece of the damn story (besides the fact you have artillery busting through the house!)...
From the first post on this thread:A piece of artillery that was apparently misfired by the military crashed through the roof of a home miles away Friday and injured a young girl's cat, which had to be euthanized, officials said.
What part did you overlook here?
Hard to see this happening — they must mean an artillery shell.
From what I can gather from the first sentence of the article, the cat had no complaints after they euthanized it.
Stupid reporting. THey say the cat was sleeping on the bed, the artillery piece landed in the bed, but don’t say if the cat was okay or not. Idiots.
From the first post on this thread:A piece of artillery that was apparently misfired by the military crashed through the roof of a home miles away Friday and injured a young girl's cat, which had to be euthanized, officials said.
I read this to mean that they had to euthanize the artillery piece.
Which had me sobbing uncontrollably.
PPPOOOOOOR ARTILLERY PIECE!!!!!!!! (weeping)
Well, this is bad, but in 1960 an artillery round fell short and killed a whole mess of people I knew who were standing in the chow line in tent city at Graf, in Germany. Now and then stuff happens and luckily it was only a cat and not the girl who was hit.
Possibly a light mortar round?
To measure 4” x 6” and only weigh 2 pounds means that it was only about 1/4” thick. Sounds more like bomb casing shrapnel rather than artillery shrapnel. If it is shrapnel at all.
An officer’s wife at Camp LeJeune NC was killed on base driving to the market from base housing when a shell went miles out of the impact zone and hit the road just in front of her car. About 1988 I think.
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