Today's award goes to the US Army servicemen who were supposed to prepare vehicles for an air drop in Germany.
During a recent training exercise in Hohenfels, Germany, this month, soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade practiced launching equipment from the rear of C-130 transport aircraft. Somehow, during the course of the drops, three Humvees managed to lose their parachutes, hurtling to the ground at high velocity.
. . .
According to the Army Times, the April 11 exercise involved dropping 150 supply bundles. During the course of the drop, three Humvees slipped their parachute rigging and fell hundreds of feet to the ground. No one was hurt, and the Army has begun an investigation into what went wrong.
There's more at the link.
Here's how it went. Language alert - as one might expect from soldiers, some of the comments are a bit rude.
From Twitter user WTF Nation, here's how one of the former Humvees looked after landing.
That won't buff out . . .
Peter
8 comments:
Hey Peter;
I drove across that field in the 80's. All I can say is that some OER (Officer Evaluation Report) will be negatively impacted..pardon the pun by this. and it rolls downhill...like a humvee in neutral....unlike those....
At least there weren't any soldiers in them (like the Russians do)!
There's going to be some serious fallout for some parachute riggers and Air Force loadmasters, that much is certain.
And cue someone(s) getting discharged/put on permanent kp duty in 3... 2... 1...
I don't have much to say except.....wow. That's a lot of money.
Its probably not as much money as you think, while the article hypes it up saying they can cost as much as $200k each. From the pictures of two of them I have seen those are just standard M998s that go for maybe 50k new.
This shows why the Army practices tasks like this - to make sure they go right when needed; it is better that a mistake like this happen in training than during a real mission.
Yes, an expensive mistake, and I'm sure people will get in trouble for it, but the important thing is that the Army will learn from it and it was in practice, not a deployment (combat, disaster relief, etc).
Rule 11: Everything is air droppable at least once.
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