Gizmodo
So, ok, everyone makes a mistake sometimes, but few of us have ever dropped a bomb from our fighter jet by accident, as happened late last week in Tulsa. Luckily, it was a dummy practice bomb, filled with nothing more exciting than a smoke charge, and apparently it wasn't the pilot's fault. But it did still drop right through one guy's apartment. Miraculously no one was hurt, though the unlucky guy himself is still a little amazed by it all:
It sounds fairly dubious, but it seems that shortly after take-off, one 22-pound BDU-33 dummy bomb from a group of six just "fell off" one of the F16s that was heading for a practice bombing run in Kansas. The first indication that something was amiss was apparently at the bombing range itself, where only five impacts were recorded from that aircraft.
There I was thinking that flyers were heroic, intelligent keen-eyed guys. I mean, you'd think you'd notice bombing Tulsa wouldn't you? Mind you, I've never been there. [Danger room]
Comments
Having grown up in Oklahoma City, I'm really angry about this "one accidental dummy practice bomb" crap.
We've been pushing for an actual invasion of Tulsa for years.
WTF? That pilot should be discharged. More than likely, he'll get paid leave and then he'll be back in work in a couple of months.
woulda been funny if the pilot was really just the guy's friend playing a joke on him. "Ooh, fake smoke missile through my apartment! good one fucker!"
Why should he be discharged? You don't even know what you're talking about dude. More than likely the blame falls on the combat air controller who is the one telling the pilot where to go and when to drop his payload. It was an accident and it could have been a lot worse, but thankfully it wasn't.
Don't they have a display that shows how many missles the plane is carrying? You'd think the guy would have noticed. I think the probable explanation is that it really did fall off.
You people should not me jumping to conclusions (both writer of the article, and commenters here.) The order was not given to drop the bomb, nor did the pilot do so. Nobody knows why the bomb dropped, but in all likelihood it was a mechanical failure. The pilot is not at fault at all. I highly doubt anyone would drop a bomb - dummy or not - in a residential neighborhood without first double checking the validity of the orders.
Lol - or maybe I'm jumping to conclusions - I'm not sure - but that's what I got from a CNN video this morning.
How could he have thought it was Salina instead of Tulsa? Salina, KS is like 300 miles from Tulsa, that's one hell of a wrong turn.
I love how dramatically removed the guy in the interview is. He's trying to grab the attention the people watching this local news report and keeps referring to the bomb as a 'missile' and claims that it 'exploded' in the shed. Which consequently knocks off the tiles in his crappy apartment bathroom.
Hope he has renters insurance. Heh.
@Stang70Fastback: Dually noted. sounds like it was some sort of mounting issue.
@dead_red_eyes: why should he be discharged? It's far more likely that the damn thing just fell off, than him accidently going through all the motions required to drop missiles... Not to mention all the motions are recorded. And you get a warning signal when the release guard is up..
@Stang70Fastback:
According to the video the pilot was told he was over a field. Thats why I assumed he was given the go ahead to drop the dummy bomb. I guess no one really knows what happened. Regardless, at least no one got hurt.
lmao.......pilots unable to tell if there over a field or over TULSA?.... friendly fire or just stupidity ?
now ask yourselves how a terrorist could possably bomb a city if the americans cant tell the differance between a field and one of thier own citys ?
If the pilot knew he had a piece of ordinance still attached I think he would have done the right thing, but in this event I don't think he had any indicators to tell him the thing HADN'T come off it's mount, nor did he have a wingman to visually sight the thing.
Blaming the pilot isn't the right course of action.
Maybe keeping training flights over the range until stuff is confirmed or some kind of a flyover prior to leaving the area so a visual can be done would help?
I mean taking five minutes to do a flyover isn't going to raise anyone's budget or anything.
The point you're all missing, is that in any event; it is either incompetence or shenanigans. 'Woops we dropped a bomb through your apartment' does not cut it. Whether it was 'Ooh, my the plane is 30 years old', or 'woops oh my it missed some scheduled maintenance' or 'woops oh my I gave the order when he was at the wrong coordinates' -- It's someone's f*up.
The point you're all missing, is that in any event; it is either incompetence or shenaningans. 'Woops we dropped a bomb through your apartment' does not cut it. Whether it was 'Ooh, my the plane is 30 years old', or 'woops oh my it missed some scheduled maintainence' or 'woops oh my I gave the order when he was at the wrong coordinates' -- It's someone's f*up.
woops, apologies for that...
Why was the pilot flying over a built up area with a full bomb rack?
@Ednonymous: I... you... but...
No. Just no, man. Think about it some more, and come back.
Hey Rookie what ever you do don't push that RED BUTTON back there...
The video of the bathroom was taken before the bomb was dropped.
i will admit one time i threw a cup of water out of my fighter jet and i felt so bad cause it sprayed all over the skydivers i was passing in the right lane
You know the funny thing is that guy isn't brown at all!
that kind of plane arent allowed to travel in civilians area ayt?
@Slartibartfast: I was going to mention the same thing... maybe this shmo is trying to have the government pay for his bathroom remodel gone wrong.
Shmo on phone to Pentagon: "yeah, uhmm your bomb fell through my house"
Pentagon: "we'll send someone right out - sorry for the inconvenience"
Shmo at house: "see, there it is, I started to clean it up - don't mind the tile-saw and color-swatches"
Military dude: "sir, that's the tail end of a nerf rocket - $14.99 at WalMart"
Shmo: "no it's not! Hand over a check, I need more grease for my hair and Iroc needs gas!"
@Amiash: actually they are, what probably happened was one of three things: the dummy bomb was improperly secured to the hardpoint on the jet, the bomb failed to release properly over the range, or a as yet unknown error occured. I severely doubt it was the pilot because you'd know already, as he would be in the process of being court martialed for reckless endangerment.
With this piece plus the USB "bomb" post earlier--
I get to use a clever reference to The Gap Band twice in one week. Damn.
I love your caption.
We lived in Wichita for ten years and used to joke that the only way anyone would ever bomb the place would be if they aimed for Omaha and missed. Who knew we shoulda been looking the other way.
"...it's just not every day you get hit by a missile...". I think some other countries would disagree with his statement.
Dude, that is bullshit, I used to play TOPGUN on the NES all time, and never once did I accidentally drop a bomb on Tulsa. Yeah, it IS the same thing.
What's up with the tons of people saying the equipment malfunctioned? It's supposed to randomly drop missiles like that.
Off to middle eastern countries you go, lil' jet and pilot.
(irony, for those who didn't pick it up)
I live in Tulsa and I never heard about this.
And who actually thinks the pilots load their own ordinance anyway? Way to throw blame on the wrong guy, without any actual, what's it called? Knowledge.
@Phishy: RE: Making local news sound exciting Bah, not as uneventful as where I live. A couple of weeks back in the local paper there was the headline "Car hit by missile", in this case the word missile was use to describe a thrown projectile (i.e. someone had thrown a stone at his car while it was parked). How ultimately exciting!
Glad this didn't happen to us in OKC...yikes!
Good reporting, Giz: in the video he actually says it didn't hit his apartment, but the shed behind it, that controls power distribution. I'm just saying, guys, you want bloggers to be taken seriously, step it up a notch.
Anyway, there's probably a bunch of ways that the bomb could have come off the rack unintentionally without it being due to improper training, improper maintenance, or just stupidity. During the flight, some piece of debris could have gotten stuck in the spring that releases the weapon and it could have hung for a while after leaving the range, for example. It could be any number of things.
We're all lucky nothing worse happened, but honestly, shit happens.
@mariogalaxyman: When I was in the USAF in Kansas we called them the F-ing ANG they can't do anything right.
he only dropped one bomb in Tulsa and he dropped the rest in a the field where was supposed to. It was mechanical failure
the bomb should've been a live one, that would've taught them a lesson.
At least the guy in the apartment didn't end up like Donnie Darko
Has anyone here ever read "The Right Stuff?" If you have, you know that that pilot has only one option - he HAS to say "I don't know what happened, it just fell off!" - he can't say he accidentally hit the button, or that the controller gave him the wrong order. Any controller who values his career will deny that story. I'm pretty confident in the ability of bombs to stay attached to planes - they don't "just fall off."
Pilots value one thing and one thing only - the permission to fly the fast jets. And the thing that qualifies you to fly the jet is that you don't fuck anything up. By admitting that he did something wrong he will be admitting that he indeed fucked up, that he doesn't have what it takes.
This sort of thing used to happen all the time with the test pilots - they would do something against regulation, they'd perform some stunt maneuver or whatever, and the plane would break apart, and afterwards they'd say stuff like "Well I don't know what happened, the thing just went crazy on me!"
Gus Grissom used that defense when his hatch blew on the second manned Mercury mission and he (unfairly) got branded for most of the rest of his career with the reputation of a pilot who fucked it up.
My guess - the pilot accidentally hit the button and is now in CYA mode for fear of losing his wings.
harmless? Let me jog the physics: Potential energy = m.g.h (J)
ermmmmmmm he was born.....hence he fucked up
Okay guys, cool down. Having loaded thousands of these things on F-15E's, I'll tell you how they work. You're talking about a practice "bomb" that's about the size of a bowling pin. They weigh in at around 35 pounds and simulate the flight characteristics of a 500 pound "dumb" bomb. They are attached to a dispenser rack that holds 6 of them mechanically. Most likely what happened is it wasn't properly locked into the rack, or the rack failed and let it go. If all it had in it was a smoke charge then the only way it could have hurt any one would be if it actually hit them. Though it would definitely scare the shit out of somebody.
The military doesn't do ANYTHING by accident, it must have been a fair warning to the people of Tulsa
Don't fuck with Bush
I have family in Tulsa! Family that I like. Someone could've gotten killed this way, I don't care what the bomb was made of. This makes me really unhappy.
@dead_red_eyes: Uh. Why?
Shew. Stupidity and ignorance are the parents of probably 95% of usless anger in this world.
most of you are idiots, and ALL of you dont know what you're talking about.
the BDU-33 is a smoke charged practice bomb that is dispensed from at SUU-20 bomb/rocket dispenser for practice purposes only. there are no sensors on these simplistic units to show if ordnance is loaded or released. it takes a considerable amount of pilot interaction to release ordnance from an aircraft... a whole lot more that just pressing the pickle button. and once over a range and dropping the ordnance, the pilot has to count how many puffs of smoke compared to button weapons release button presses to know how many bombs he has left or if any had failed to release.
bottom line, this is purely an accident, and not in any way pilot related. if anything, the weapons load crew and the load team chief are to blame for improperly loading the BDU into place... or the armament maintenance unit for letting an improperly serviced SUU-20 out after inspection.
@oakie: you read "wikipedia.org" too?! What a coincidence... So do I!!! Its like we're blood-brothers or something!!!
BTW sparky, you are not the first to imply it wasn't the pilots fault. Relax. We are ALL idiots here. Yourself included.
Next they'll "accidentally" nuke Iran into the stone age.
@frankedb: Dude. Bomb, aircraft, falling, crash, apartment building?... it's just nasty, fullstop. And interesting, no?
@Barry99705: Glad to see that someone knows what they're talking about instead of trying to claim pilot error. The first thing that I thought when I read the story is that some ground crew member is in deep doo-doo.