...BELGIUM AIR FORCE F-16 Destroyed..

[GW8345]

2 hours ago, Chris L said:

 

 From doing cross servicing training with Nato. I can tell you that their rules are not the same as the same as our rules . That could account for different issues.

 

Cheers, Christian 

Agreed, some countries are not as "tight" on their maintenance/safety procedures as others and that might have bite them in the rear.

 

As they say, ordnance safety precautions are written in blood.

[William G]

9 hours ago, GW8345 said:

If the gun system is working properly, is should go into clear after each firing (clearing sector solenoid) so that there are no rounds in the breech (chambered) until the gun spoils up again.

 

Not knowing all the details I can think of three scenarios as to why the gun fired;

 

1) Maintenance Malpractice - the maintainers screwed up and didn't follow procedures.

2) The gun failed to clear after last firing and the ground crew failed to ensure the gun was cleared prior to performing maintenance.

3) The gun failed to clear and EMI (stray) voltage got into the electrical system causing one round to fire. (seen this happen back in 91 to a Tomcat at Oceana)

 

Bottom line, someone screwed up royally and this wasn't a "oops, my mistake" kind of thing.

 

 

As to #1, yeah If you don't have the gun safe pin in its malpractice or it is intentional.

#2 Safing pin should have been inserted...Now I have seen the pin get forgotten because some crewchiefs prefer the streamers to be short short short... kinda like the shorts on the juicy monsters and bar girls when on TDY. And I have seen a few who prefer to have the streamer stored inside gun purge door, with no streamer dangling in the breeze...

#3 Interesting

So one other thing I want to know is \was it 1 round or many?

1 round  electrical discharge. maybe ... high enough shock can initiate the single round , but not many as the gun is hydraulically spun.

Still falls back to Intent IMHO, If it was One shot then the guy was an accidental sniper.. One Shot One Kill...

 

 

William G

[SBARC]

I continue to be impressed by the level of knowledge of ARC'ers.

[HOLMES]

ME too Steve... many ARCers  are very intelligent.and   I like to read their opinions ... their knowledge of Aviation etc is amazing. Thank you Gentlemen.

 

Edited October 24, 2018 by HOLMES

[Slartibartfast]

I can't say they are intelligent without talking with them, but they are certainly knowledgeable.

 

Having worked in the petroleum industry for nearly thirty years, I was quite indoctrinated to considering safety issues.  We used a swiss cheese model to assess danger.  Each step in a process is a slice of cheese and each hole is a potential safety issue.There can be many slices in describing a process and our goal was to never have holes aligned.  Each step in a process was to have a method in place to block each hole from a proceeding step.

 

A lot of holes aligned in this incident.  And they usually are the result of human action.

[William G]

8 Years working on the F-16 from Block 5's to Block 50's

From Avionics to assisting as a crewchief in a pinch.

 

Yep lots of skills and lots of experience.

I Like the Swiss Cheese method, have to see how that works in the world of insurance for me at this juncture of my life.

 

 

William G

[Scooby]

7 hours ago, Slartibartfast said:

I can't say they are intelligent without talking with them, but they are certainly knowledgeable.

 

Having worked in the petroleum industry for nearly thirty years, I was quite indoctrinated to considering safety issues.  We used a swiss cheese model to assess danger.  Each step in a process is a slice of cheese and each hole is a potential safety issue.There can be many slices in describing a process and our goal was to never have holes aligned.  Each step in a process was to have a method in place to block each hole from a proceeding step.

 

A lot of holes aligned in this incident.  And they usually are the result of human action.

 

I was a Human Factors in Military Aviation Facilitator, we used the Swiss cheese model too.

[Finn]

Safety pins don't always work, i was in Baden working that Friday night loading the CF-104s were 500rds of 20mm to go to Holland on Monday when this happened:

 

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=54932

 

instead of disconnecting the tip tank carts the crew relied on the safety pin to do it's job but the switch was out of alignment so when the button was pressed ... The Fire Dept responded very quickly so they were able to limit the damage, but they did drop their hoses and backed the crash trucks up when the 20mm started cooking off. There was one slight injury, a tech when he saw the fire went to the nearest fire alarm box, he had a wrench in one hand and nothing in the other and used his bare hand to break the glass to pull the alarm. Just a slight cut is all he got.

 

Jari

[admiralcag]

And, then, there are those times they do. I used to work as a technician with the 140th Wing in the Weapons Loading shop. One morning, the crew I was one was called out to the flightline during launch. A crew chief couldn't pull the pin from a drop tank and we were called out to assist. Turns out the Release Shop did a confidence check and didn't de-cart the tank. System worked as advertised. D'oh!

 

Vern

[William G]

14 hours ago, admiralcag said:

And, then, there are those times they do. I used to work as a technician with the 140th Wing in the Weapons Loading shop. One morning, the crew I was one was called out to the flightline during launch. A crew chief couldn't pull the pin from a drop tank and we were called out to assist. Turns out the Release Shop did a confidence check and didn't de-cart the tank. System worked as advertised. D'oh!

 

Vern

kinda like when someone says they need a hammer to get the safing pin out because its stuck.. d'oh

 

William G