Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Air National Guard bombed Maryland bar's parking lot! OOPS

SUDLERSVILLE, Md. (WJZ) � A freak accident in the skies over Maryland�s Eastern Shore. A military plane drops a �practice� bomb into a Queen Anne�s County parking lot, narrowly missing cars and people.The National Guard now admits�it could have been a disaster.
Monique Griego�has the eyewitness accounts.
& pictures


http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/08/30/military-practice-bomb-lands-in-bar-parking-lot/

Ooops is right.

The VERY first thing I learned when going through Ground Attack School was the NEVER EVER dick with the armament switches except when I was actually over the bombing range. If this pilot even touched them, his butt will never see a cockpit again.

Could have been a gay bar..

Can you imagine a rather inebriated patron walking out of the bar just as that bomb hit?
A thunderous "THUD" WTF was that?

:joe dirt: its a moon rock!

The Alabama ANG dropped an inert Maverick on southern WV in the 90's. Hit a hill in Mingo county IIRC. The crew was taking it back to the Vermont ANG. The Alabama ANG borrowed the missile for training. The back seater (F-4) told the pilot he was going to turn it on and get some training on the way to Vermont. The back seater couldn't get the missle to spin up so he turned it off. They were gear down on approach and the back seater looked down and the missile was gone! They went missed approach and flew back the Alabama. They plotted where they were when the back seater turned the power on and a search party found it. We took the remains back to Alabama and asked what we had done to them?

It's Maryland to bad it wasn't an active one!

Well, it was on the Eastern Shore of Maryland so there is a fair chance that it was a conservative community.

They probably made a duck boat out of it....

Guess anything is possible, but highly doubtful?

Just a practice run to get our military used to the idea of bombing American citizens on American soil.

Nothing to see here , move along



Mike

Jeez, I hate it when that happens!

Admit it though, that will be a great yarn for the locals to tell their grand-children.

Note for bartender from bar owner: DO NOT piss off any off duty flyboys anymore!!!!

Hey!

It's Maryland, remember?

Don't let anything that happens there surprise you � unless it's an instance of fairness or reason.

Bad crab cake ???

More like stop serving them. Them boys need to sober up.

Years ago ('81 or so) when I was in VF 151 we and our sister squadron, VF 161, were working out of Misawa, Japan practicing our bombing on a manned range north of the air base. We were carrying six, Mark 76, 25 pound practice bombs on two TER's (triple ejector racks) on each mission.

The mark 76 is shaped like a long teardrop with what amounts to a shotgun barrel from front to the tail. A spotting charge sort of like a shotgun shell along with a plug with a firing pin is inserted in the nose. When it impacts the ground it generates a plume of white smoke so the hits can be spotted by a spotter on the range or by other a/c in the flight.

A good buddy of mine in VF161 only got five spots out of six "hot" runs on the target which means that when the flight joined up after the last run he should have one "hung" bomb (i.e. it didn't come off the rack).

Well, as each wingman joins up they check the aircraft in front of them for hung ordnance. When the guy behind my bud joined up and said "you're clean", they knew they had a problem!

When they landed they wrote up the discrepancy for the maintenance log book, the bomb rack was impounded by the Safety Department, and the squadron filed a TFOA Report (Things Falling Off Aircraft). Then the investigation started.

One of the most important things to do was find out where the bomb went. That part was REAL EASY....it landed in...............................A SCHOOL YARD!!! Fortunately all the kiddies were inside when it hit.

My bud ( name withheld to protect innocent ), was sweating bullets to say the least! When the rack was checked out they found that there was a short in the electrical wiring and that stray voltage had caused the bomb to come off whenever it felt like it and Murphy's Law being what it is it picked just about the worst possible place to land.