Some People Got Some ‘Splainin’ To Do . . .
. . . and, I’d guess, also need to start working on a new resume.
From the Army Times:
The National Guard says an artillery shell fired by a Missouri Army National Guard unit during training at Fort Chaffee landed near a home in Franklin County.
The incident occurred on Thursday, 5 June 2014.
Although there were no casualties, that’s due as much due to blind luck as anything else. The errant round was a live round, fired during a live fire exercise. The home was damaged by shrapnel.
The unit involved was the 1st Battalion, 129th Field Artillery Regiment of Maryville, Missouri. It was ordered to cease training, and the incident is under investigation.
Category: Big Army, Military issues, Reserve Issues
I remember when that happened at Ft Hood about ten(?) years ago.
The story I heard was that the LT in charge of the gun was shooting a reverse azimuth and forgot to subtract 180…
Or the NCOIC of the exercise was so hungover that he put the round in the wrong way.
All jokes aside, it is very fortunate that no one was hurt or killed.
Found this: http://www.wnd.com/2000/02/413/
Under 3200, add 3200, over 3200 subtract 3200.
mils that is
Doh!
Every Artilleryman’s nightmare radio call. Resulting in this crew command: “To the rear of the piece, Fall In!”
For you non Redlegs. When something like this happens there are about 18 things involving about 8 different individuals that went wrong. And that is just between the gun line and FDC.
The 129th is Harry Truman’s old unit btw
Glad no one was injured or killed. I can here it now, “Honey, did you just here a loud noise in the backyard?” Husband, “Did you?”
Jokes aside, anybody want to guess how many attorneys have contacted the homeowners already?
Enter stage left: Daniel Bernath.
A real deal CPO!
They probably had a platoon of lawyers drooling on their briefcases while standing on their doorstep!
Today must be the Artillery day. I have called a check fire more than once over that issue. Its easier to do than most think. As a platoon Sgt I kept my Officer Override Device with me at all times. It was commonly known as a compass.
Glad no one was hurt, but I immediately thought of the mortar scene in “Stripes” where Sgt Hulka got blown up!
Mythbusters already did it.
There was a giant patch on a road outside of Ft. Stewart that the locals said was the repair of a crater made by an errant round fired from the post, sometime in the late ’70’s.
Don’t know how true the story was, but it gave the sleepy little town nearby something to talk about!
The FISTers will be investigated to see if a FO called the wrong grid. The FDC (Fire Direction Center) will be investigated to see if they put something into their computers wrong, or heard the wrong grid, etc. The gun line will be investigated to see of they had the right deflection and quadrant dialed into their sight and also that their azimuth of lay is correct and they shot the correct round, fuse, and powder charge. Artillery firing incidents take a long time to investigate. Either way, some NCO out there will be a PVT pretty soon.
It doesn’t matter if the FO called the wrong grid, calls for fire that will land outside the safety fan should never be accepted by the FDC and the gun should never fire a round where the settings are outside the limits on the little cheat sheet that all the section chiefs have.
I had a gun crew and section chief make series of spectacular mistakes on one round, so it can happen. A 105mm charge 7 by itself or a 1.5 second time fuze by itself would have been very bad, but 1.5 seconds at the MV of a charge 7 put it just over the fence.
This is what happens when the Field Service Rep for the Fire Support Systems is not on the ground during the live fire event due to the Government not approving the new contract vehicle for Fire Support Systems.
Lots of things can go wrong on an indirect fire shoot.
The one Shoot Out Incident I distinctly remember happened When I was with 10th Marines in 1982.
We had a Battery that had recently changed over from the M101A1s to the M114s. There were also Several new Marines who had not yet attended the Regimental MOS School.
The guns were Short handed and the particular piece had a Cpl in charge who was also talking to the FDC and acting as a gunner. He had 2 semi experienced and School trained Lcpls working with him. One was the A Gunner and the other was handing the projectiles with one of the boot Marines. The other Boot Marine was the Powder Man. They had been shooting “Green Bag” Propellent ( which has 5 “bags numbered 1-5) then switched to White bag propellent, which has 5 bags alse ( but THEY are numbered 3-7).. When the FDC caled down a fire mision for charge 5 white bag, the new Marine simplely counted the bags instead of the numbers and the gun shot 3 charge 7 rounds down range.
They over shot the entire impact area and landed mt a round. A retired Colonel’s wife and daughter were driving by. The lady was hit by a piece o schrapnel in the back of her head but managed to stop the cart before she bled out.
To say shit hit the fan in 1oth Marines would be an undertatement.
I was involved in an ARTEP evaluation at Graf one summer. I was assigned to an 8 inch SP Battalion and myself and another NBC NCO were in charge of the NBC evals. We were scheduled to hit one of the Batteries later in the evening and until then, no aggressor activities were scheduled. We were just crusing around in the HUMMV monitoring the other unit’s net when we heard someone key up and announce that they had “incoming”. My buddy and I thought that was rather odd as no aggressor activities were scheduled, as I mentioned earlier. Then we heard “cease fire-freeze” and some other disturbing traffic, so we headed that way.
Come to find out one of the rounds detonated just a little short while enroute downrange (exploded about 200 feet above an FDC track that was being fired over from a Battery about 400 meters behind it). By some dumb luck there were no casualties other than the generator on the FDC track catching some shrapnel and a radio antennae getting sliced in two.
We were firing Korean War era 8 inch rounds that had been in Germany since the end of that war and evidently found one that didn’t age very gracefully.
Flak jackets became all the rage again whenever someone was live firing…..
REPEAT OVER!!