Drive On -- General Dynamics

BUMBLEBEE on 14th May 2022, 12:19 PM

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Stanton is trying to catch some z's, but gets interrupted.

edit shoulda called this page Oscar the grouch

lirvilas on 14th May 2022, 1:54 PM

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seems like they should've done that prior to going on the mission?

BUMBLEBEE on 14th May 2022, 2:13 PM

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Every day dude, every fucking day… But to your point, Stanton is a good driver - there’s no way he would’ve been copping z’s without checking his track first. That’s why when they were blazing through town the other guy threw track and not him… I just wanted the general dynamics tech to say something maintenancey.

Oldarmourer on 14th May 2022, 2:27 PM

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Never hurts to check something after it's been used, it also never hurts to have someone else look at your work just in case you've done it so often you see it being right when it isn't, we always had two people sign for any maintenance work, one for doing it and one for inspecting, and sometimes for particularly flight critical tasks, a third who wasn't involved in the actual job had to do an inspection and sign 'third column'.

Oldarmourer on 14th May 2022, 2:23 PM

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There was a Tech who got a pilot's attention sort of like that...
He had his head down in the cockpit at the dearming point and appeared to be 'turning knobs and flipping switches'
Aircrew are required to have both hands in clear view when the A/C is being saftied or armed, period, no exception, moving them out of sight just isn't done, EVER!
Said Tech took a rope chock (about eight feet of 4 or 5" nylon 'rope' used to chock the wheels easie than wooden ones), pushed the side of the A/C a few times to get his attention then when he opened the canopy after being given the signal to, hit him with it.
Good thing for helmets, that's one heck of a bullwhip ;)
Charges were almost laid but assaulting an officer was almost justified in that case and a deal was worked out that I'm not privy to the details of, even if the guy worked for me some years later.

BUMBLEBEE on 15th May 2022, 7:10 AM

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I can't think of anything quite as touchy in armor, but that's probably because if something breaks the tank doesn't fall to the ground and explode. There is one thing that gets people punch-in-the-face mad, and that's when tank commanders don't safe their fifty cals, and then accidentally grab on to the butterfly trigger (which in peacetime is a very convenient handhold) when they climb out the cupola, firing the machine-gun accidentally. Especially makes people mad when you're in column...

Oldarmourer on 15th May 2022, 5:06 PM

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It's not so much falling to the ground and exploding as a Tech bursting into flaming pieces when a rocket pod fires off 'accidentally' while they're walking behind or in front of it or a guided missile departs the rail at high velocity without much guidance...lots of stuff coming out the back end to make the front end go away fast.
You never walk in front of ordnance or behind Rx/Mx if you can possibly avoid it but when there's two on the same wing it's kind of hard not to.
I know of a few times when ordnance was fired at the arm/dearm point, it's not supposed to be possible but you still don't mess with ANY switches when someone's under the plane putting pins in and they have to be right beside the store to safety it.
One guy pulled the pin to arm a rocket pod, luckily it was set to single instead of ripple and only one fired, I wasn't there but several people who were told me he made a good fifty feet on his hands and knees before he even tried to stand up and run and would have beat any olympic sprinter doing it.
Another time the entire pod of 19 fired out into the ocean.
I personally know of a 20mm cannon that fired 14 rounds with the safety 'on' due to an internal failure in the mechanism and things including stores fall off of A/C with or without help so often they have their own fault code 'TFOA' ;)
We used to get called out to pick up stray ordnance, usually practice bombs, up from people's property every so often and somewhere in the forests of Northern New Brunswick there's a simulator for an AIR-2A nuclear rocket rusting away for the past 40-odd years.
Completely inert, just the circuitry for the Aircrew to practice switch selections on and a recorder of what was done when, but there are other things that 'fell off' and were never found...

BUMBLEBEE on 18th May 2022, 6:47 PM

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I read in one of those PM comics that if you manually turn the barrel of a Gatling gun it will fire...

Drive On

General Dynamics

14th May 2022, 12:19 PM

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