Mechanic ‘Accidentally’ Fires Vulcan Cannon & Obliterates F-16 Sitting on the Runway
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/news/f-16.html
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/news/f-16.html
Geez, negligent discharge of a vulcan cannon. Some words a CO does not want to see in a sentence.
Belgian F-16 from last year... lol. Oops.
There's a holdback tool installed to safe an M-61A1 because it's electrically primed, so the tool keeps the rounds from being chambered when the gun rotates. Seems they did a hydraulic spin check of the system, without the tool installed. Which includes squeezing the trigger to test the rotation of the system, with electrical power on of course. Why they would do this with a loaded system and not ensure the holdback tool was installed is beyond me... plus not ensuring there is anything in front of the cannon as it rotated.
It's science, and engineering.
My head hurts now, as I sobered up slightly. Going to down a few beers to help.
There's a holdback tool installed to safe an M-61A1 because it's electrically primed, so the tool keeps the rounds from being chambered when the gun rotates. Seems they did a hydraulic spin check of the system, without the tool installed. Which includes squeezing the trigger to test the rotation of the system, with electrical power on of course. Why they would do this with a loaded system and not ensure the holdback tool was installed is beyond me... plus not ensuring there is anything in front of the cannon as it rotated.
It's science, and engineering.
My head hurts now, as I sobered up slightly. Going to down a few beers to help.
Looks like another Thursday night to me. What's the problem? 
Can you imagine how loud that must have been for the techs standing around and not prepared?
Hella loud. I'm sure some poop came out too.
ha, that's a fun conversation with your boss
Oooh! Damn, I didn't know there was a camera there, if I knew I wouldn't put it down there..
And the beer-keg broke to...
just my luck...
now I have to to fly back to the store, but first sneak back to the hangar and lend my wing-man's jet.... Don't tell him.. I' ll be right back
Meanwhile the tarmac, grass, hedge rows etc all survived the Vulcan spurt??? :o
or was that Tuesday night?Looks like another Thursday night to me. What's the problem?
Lol, this is brilliant. God the world is awesome.
No, it wasn't just Tuesday night... It was Tuesday night and Thursday night!
That was not an error, is just CIG do field reserch for the TEST's Ares Inferno mantenance operation: ammo check test succesful: they are loaded!
I think this also produce a nice and loud amount of colorful course by many people, especially the base chief...
Well you don't see the wall behind it...
Your right.... A TEST member clearly did such fine work
Man, that is crazy. Some serious firepower. Not sure why the pilot didn't leave the plane running with the shields on.
Lucky no one was near that plane.
I have always found it amazing how many accidents happen in the military that are due to operator headspace and timing.
I was supporting a gunnery while stationed in Korea. The tankers secured the machine guns in the tanks overnight. One morning while getting the weapon out one of the guys took a M240 round through the shoulder. Turns out they were not properly rodded off the range the day before, so there was still a round in the chamber.
Lucky no one was near that plane.
I have always found it amazing how many accidents happen in the military that are due to operator headspace and timing.
I was supporting a gunnery while stationed in Korea. The tankers secured the machine guns in the tanks overnight. One morning while getting the weapon out one of the guys took a M240 round through the shoulder. Turns out they were not properly rodded off the range the day before, so there was still a round in the chamber.
Honestly things like this don't surprise me at all anymore in these industries, as a diesel mechanic who works on DOT stuff all day long I see the horrors of what companies are doing and not doing, the safety and irresponsibility at all levels, from trucking to airlines has severely been ignored and we will only see more and more crazy shit like this.
IIRC, there is also a weight on wheels sensor that is supposed to prevent this type of thing from happening.
Question, how many other times have safety systems been defeated so that mechanics can take short cuts? How often has management looked the other way because it gets things done faster? How many people have been given on the job training by senior mechanics that “this is how we do things here”....
these things rarely happen because of a one off mistake. These things happen because safety systems are bypassed on a regular basis, and management either ignores these issues, is ignorant of the issues because they don’t have good supervision in place, or encourages it because they like the (normal) results?
when you investigate things like this, it’s important that you don’t stop at the individual, but look beyond to find the root cause. Otherwise, this will just end up happening again.
So true man...and the worst thing is that is not only in these particular cases, but in most of the industry and working place: superficiality and poor understanding of procedure are a day to day standard nowaday....
Lot's of shortcuts abound, that's for sure. Some of the safety items require bypassing, per the tech data, in order to perform certain tests. But that's why there are multiple safes. Like you said, the weight on wheels function needs to be bypassed by using the armament ground override switch, in order to test the functionality of the weapons systems on the ground. But knowing that, you have to ensure you're following all the other safety precautions. Production rates skyrocket while manning drops, and suddenly you find yourself with 18 or more hours of work to compress into a 12hr shift. People rush, shortcuts are taken, and stories like this happen.
Gun system loaded
Holdback tool not installed
P1 connector (firing lead) still connected
Aircraft not oriented in safe direction or not pointed at a gun berm
Test performed
Bad decisions that resulted in this incident. In my experience, there's no way this should have been attempted with a loaded gun to begin with, but every country does things their own way. Not sure what Belgian Air Force rules are. I'm sure they are different now. :)