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T-Tail-Tall-Tail:
DARWIN AWARD WINNERS
A True Story of the
Survival of the Most Stupid
Normally the Darwin Awards are issued annually to
celebrate Charles Darwin's
theory of evolution, the basic principal of which is
"survival of the fittest".
The Darwin Awards honor "those who improve gene pool
by removing themselves
from it".
The working assumption is that members of various
species who demonstrate a
reasonable amount of physical fitness or mental
acuity are better suited to
survive in the cruel world in which we live. Nature
will weed out those less
fit to survive, gradually improving causing
stronger, faster, smarter
individuals to dominate.
In most cases, the winners of the annual Darwin
awards are not alive to receive
their awards... they typically are dead (Population
Control Volunteers, as they
are sometimes termed). .. a certain result of doing
something incredibly
stupid. For example, a very mild example would be
getting crushed to death by a
candy machine while trying save a quarter by tipping
it over to cause its
contents to fall out of the little bins.
There are many Darwin award sites on the
internet..here's a couple of links to them
for some additional reading on the topic.
DarwinAwards.com
reddit Darwin Award pages
Urban Legends
The story below is true, almost worthy of the Darwin
Awards, except
(fortunately) there were no serious permanent
injuries. If you were involved in
this incident, and aren't too ashamed to have your
side of this story
published, or want to correct any details, please
let us know. But you have to
include your name.....
A Good Cigar
at 35,000 feet
anonymous
Sometime in 1982, (tail number unknown) a Norton crew
was returning from
Pope to Norton after a stateside airdrop mission.
The pilot in the left seat
decided to light a cigar. Another pilot, in the jump
seat, complained and
donned his oxygen mask. In response, the left seater
covertly disconnected the
jump seater's mask from the oxygen regulator hose,
with the intent of putting
smoke into the hose.
Accidentally, lit cigar ash entered the oxygen
regulator hose, before the hose
was reconnected. The jump seater smelled the smoke
and selected "Emergency" on
the oxygen regulator. When that didn't help, he
removed the mask to clear the
smoke. When he disconnected the mask from the
regulator hose, a "2-foot" sheet
of fire leapt from the hose.
It ignited an oxygen-fed fire that spread to the
flooring. To put out the fire,
the left seat pilot shutoff the crew oxygen system.
At about the same time, the
engineer while switching to "MAX" airflow,
inadvertently hit the bleed duct
overheat test switch, shutting off the engine bleed
valves and disabling the
air-conditioning packs.
The crew started a descent but soon became hypoxic.
The crew oxygen system was
again turned on. The fire re-ignited with a fireball
large enough to melt
components on the Flight Engineer's panel. The crew
eventually extinguished the
fire, reset the bleed valves, and recovered to Vance
AFB, in Enid, OK. Members
of the crew suffered only minor injuries (but major
embarrassment).
Tuesday, April 11, 2006: By some strange internet serendipity I got two separate emails within the last day or so providing a little bit more info on the above incident. Here's the first:
Monday, April 10, 2006
In case you were wondering about the qualifications
of the crew, here they are.
The gentleman in the left seat (the one with the
cigar) was either the chief of
squadron stan eval or the ops officer. Either way,
he was a well placed and
highly qualified crew member. The right seater was
an FEAC. (He was the only
truly innocent).
The guy in the jump seat, the one who hated cigar
smoke, was just a basic
aircraft/airdrop aircraft commander.
Although I wasn't on duty at the time, I was a duty
officer at the command post
in Norton when this outstanding display of
airmanship occurred. The guy who was
on duty talked to the crew and his impressions were
that this was a really big
deal.
There was so much smoke in the cockpit that they
couldn't see the instruments.
They also inhaled so much smoke, (remember, they had
to turn off the oxygen)
that they were very very hoarse.
Mike Caliguire
C-141 A/B
Norton AFB, CA
15th MAS 1978-1983
McGuire AFB, NJ
732 MAS/ALS 1986-1998
Monday, April 10, 2006
The pilot (who latter became a wing FE) with the
cigar who ignited the oxygen
was thereafter nick-named "Torch". A few years latter
he had the misfortune of
being on the aircraft that had a wheel-well fire
at Twenty-Nine Palms MCAS. A short mat
runway. The fire was caused by
leaking spraying hydraulic fuel on hot brakes as the
plane pulled into parking.
No one was hurt but it took a few weeks to patch the
plane up and get it back
to Norton. The event did not help is image.
Question, Did you ever hear of the Camp Fire girls?
The squadron had a couple of female pilots who were
tagged with that nick name
after completing an over water trip in the 80's. One
really screwed up but the
other was included in the dig because of
association.
On the aircraft there was a small oven that could
heat up a few frozen meals.
The pilots ordered frozen meals but the oven was
broken and they were left with
a long flight with nothing to eat but a ice-cube
dinner. One of the gals made
several attempts to heat her meal with an Aldus lamp
... not enough heat.
(Note: the Aldus Lamp was originally developed to
flash Morse Code instructions
between ships)
She then decided on a really bad
idea.
She cut off the top of a coke can stuffed it with
paper and lit it on fire and
placed the frozen meal on top of it. Thus was born
the Camp Fire girls.
It didn't help that a few months later, when flying
with Doctor Death (a
co-pilot who liked to tote around a large hand gun)
she put the wrong
coordinates into the in-flight computer and took the
plane two hundred miles
off course just before entering the Canadian ADIZ.
After a year or so she moved on to another flying
outfit at another base where
she changed her surname back to her maiden name.
Kent Davis
C-141 Nav 1972-1991