Hi all,
I want to bring some prospective to a lot of this negative
THINKING AND THOUGHTS and I did had a reflective over the last couple of day. I am not telling you this because I am insensitive to anyones thoughts here. I would just like for each of us to reflect on this.
I am near 60 years old, I have been through a lot. I looked back at my tracks and saw at least 15 instances in my life where my life, that but for the grace of God, could have easily been snuffed out.
When I was 19 years old, I served in the USAF as a weapons specialist and was qualified to load any bomb, rocket, missile, or any munitions that you could think of, nuke or conventional, that could be loaded on a B-52.
During the war in Viet Nam, I was stationed on Anderson Air Force Base. There was an international incident where by North Korea shot down one of our planes, and the crew was killed. Our base and all of its resources were placed in a state of readiness to respond to this act of war against us.
My job was to outfit 2 B-52's to be ready to fly and deliver a devastating blow to the North Koreans, by dropping 2 plane loads of anti-personnel munitions. Keep in mind that these are probably the most dangerous bombs in our arsenal. They are dangerous, because it doesn't take much to set them off and create a chain reaction of explosions as each main holding container has 80 individual canisters with 80 each bomblets per canister, that will explode upon 14 psi of applied pressure on a trip wire that encircles the bomblet much like the seams on a baseball.
Each bomblet is loaded with somewhere between 60-100 beebees (scrapnel)that have at the bombs core a shaped fuse. When the we completed our job, and the planes were ready for take off, the mission was called off. Mind you that it takes 12 hours per plane to get ready for this task.
We worked all day and night with no rest to get that task accomplished. We were in barracks trying to get some sleep and were summoned back out to down load all the canisters from their larger main holding containers. After the these Main containers are downloaded from the planes; the canisters within, must be downloaded at a remote location. Why? In case there is an inadvertent explosion, no planes would be lost only the loading crews would be lost. Get the picture? This is no movie folks, this is real life threatening disasters in the making.
We were at the remote site in the process of downloading these cannisters. In spite of the lack of sleep we all suffered, we pushed on to get things done. The B-52's that we had previously converted, had to be put back into operation to drop bombs on Viet Nam. So push on we did.
There were only 2 crews that were qualified to do this work, our crew and the loading evaluation team. During the unloading procedure, the Senior Chief came in and barked out that he didn't understand what was taking us so long to get our job done.
Keep in mind that the mission to bomb North Korea had been scrapped and we were totally exhausted. That is not insensitivity, but just a callous disregard for our well being. Our team leader was intimidated by this Chief, and did not respond with the safety concerns that he should have voiced, instead, in spite of the danger, and hazards pushed everyone to frag out, that means damn the safety regs go full tilt.
He was the one that could not keep up and failed to secure one of these canisters that popped open, and the next you know, bomblets, were streaming out of that canister and falling onto the concrete deck, when I saw this bomlets were spreading directly in my and everyone else's path, as they were rolling on the ground, with one giant leap, I ran as if I had wings on my feet that carried me to safety.
The access door to this Hangar type concrete structure was about 100-120 feet away, and I swear it seemed like I was carried on eagles wings in a wink of an eye and out that doorway and didn't stop running till I was about 1/4 mile away.
You see about 2 weeks earlier, a crew of 8 men in Thailand was vaporized during a storage task on these very weapons. That is a much safer task that what we were doing. While I had my head to the task, I blocked out thoughts of what could happen, and did my job.
I don't know how it was possible, actually I do, for me to get out of that building in the manner I did. All I know, is that I was the only one that made out of there to notify EOD (Emergency Ordinance Disposal). As I reflected on that over the last day or 2, I know that I know that I know, that I was in God's hands and that He was the only one that could have pulled me out of there to then call the proper crews to rescue my team mates.
The rescue of my mates took several hours. The EOD team had to wear protective equipment as they picked these bomblets out of that building, 1 at a time, until a safe path out was cleared for my mates to get out safely.
The next day, I was back on the flight line loading 2 planes a night, as usual. Nobody, even gave thought to crisis counseling, nothing special done for us. Just suck it up and get back to work. So it is all relative. What was that you were scared of? Did you say thoughts? Don't worry! Be Happy! They are just thoughts!
Here's something that I want to share with all of you:
http://aie-llc.com/hisall.doc
http://www.thedashmovie.com/
Please pardon any errors in grammar or spelling. I am spent from recounting this event to do an edit.
