Plain stupidity happens when young Men train for war. Safety 1st policies make us weak. I have to do a risk assessment every day for people sitting at a desk in a school. The Army should be risky. The storms rolling in are easy to avoid though.
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Lightning Strike at Fort Gordon
- Thread starter WildMan
- Start date
Plain stupidity happens when young Men train for war. Safety 1st policies make us weak. I have to do a risk assessment every day for people sitting at a desk in a school. The Army should be risky. The storms rolling in are easy to avoid though.
In (the former West) Germany in the late 80s prior to bringing down the iron curtain, my platoon was doing training missions at night. The launch vehicle was about 50 meters from the tree line, sitting in an open field. The Lance missile was at "High" elevation just as one of those rare German lightning storms rolled in.
We got off and away from that launch vehicle faster than I'd've thought possible. Sure enough, lightning struck the missile (a trainer, thank God!). It blew out the monitor-programer, which luckily was an old vacuum tube mini computer. Nothing actually blew up, and no one was injured. No IRFNA or UDMH was released, and I think the missile cable survived.
My point, it took just a few minutes from that first peel of thunder until our missile was struck. Open military ranges are dangerous for more reasons than munitions. Sitting out in a lightning storm doesn't equate to smart training. But **** happens fast.
IIRC this is about the same time when the US Navy had to do a full, service-wide, safety stand down due to numerous injuries and incidents. And I believe they had an injury or death during their stand down.
