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To: Darksheare
I woulndn't want to have been the saftey officer on that shoot! But the Mother of All Out of Safe Shots was the in late '50s. An 11" (280mm) HE round was fired from Atomic Annie out of safe and landed at the intersection of Sheridan and Gore in Lawton. It was early in the morning, and there were no casualties (other than some careers). The story was that both the safety officer (some poor butterbar) and the FDC officer (the battery XO) were not only cashiered, but went to Leavenworth.
784 posted on 07/22/2003 11:29:32 AM PDT by CatoRenasci (Ceterum Censeo [Gallia][Germania][Arabia] Esse Delendam --- Select One or More as needed)
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To: CatoRenasci
Ouch!
Atomic Annie still sits in her 'berth' at the on post museum last I knew.
I was on pass for a few hours and went out to wander the grounds of the museum.
I looked over my shoulders and saw no-one arund, so I stepped over the plastic chain and ran my hand down the carraige.
After drooling for a few seconds, I heard a chuckle behind me.
Two brass collars were standing there eyeballing me.
They asked me what it was like to be that close to the old howitzer.

I gave them my "MMMm Power!" statement.

My home unit had a problem with out of safe shots one fine day, FDC kept giving us data, and couldn't figure out why the heck we were out.
Seems the Range FO was reading the wrong data off to us.
(We weren't getting data from our FO's, they were out doing 'real' training that day. Figures.)

Once we got back in the groove, we had a bunch of rounds turn dud on us.
Bad fuzes, all made in 1950's or so.
So we had to stop, count fuzes, find lot numbers, and then switch them out.
Meanwhile, my guncrew and I are asking the section chief, "Chief, we goin' to jail yet?"

He told us of horror stories from a range in connecticut. Seems the round hit a bridge right after the post CO drove over the bridge.
I always chalked that story as a soldier story.
'Course, there was one guy I know who got his right kneee in the way of the breech of the M119A1 while it was firing. He went flying for about 10 or more feet outside the trails.

I also remember them having us load and fire a Do Not Load mission.
I'm surprised that we didn't get ushered into the basement suite at Leavenworth.
That was 1998, and our new Cap was having us do 24 hour continuous operations without sleep for three days straight. And, that was the last time we did 24 hour ops.

But, NOTHING beats what you mentioned.
Landing something in Lawton at the corner of Sheridan and Gore is impressive.
Just not in the way anyone wants to be impressive at!

I was glad quite a few times that I wasn't in charge of anything like that.
809 posted on 07/22/2003 12:25:59 PM PDT by Darksheare ("I didn't say it wouldn't burn, I said it wouldn't hurt.")
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