Danger Will Robinson 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
These stories cover the actions of one individual who did not kill himself (by some divine action)but did pull off some of the dumbest stunts I have ever seen. I was in the Navy at the time and worked at the Naval Air Test Center in Pax River, MD. This person was an AME which means he worked on the oxygen systems, ejection seat and all safety systems onboard an aircraft.
1. I was walking out to my aircraft to preform a preflight inspection. As I approached the aircraft I noticed that this guy was filling the onboard Oxygen system. When the tank is full and if you don't stop the flow of oxygen to the tank there is an overflow valve that will dump the excess into a "clean" (no grease or oil present)compartment below the tank. If you do happen to overfill the tank the procedure is to move away from the aircraft along with everyone else and call the crash crew truck. Over time the Oxygen will evapoate and all will be well. For some strange reason this guy decides that he doesn't want to call the crash crew so he is taking a long clean straw and sucking the liquid oxygen half way up the straw and spitting it into a clean bucket. The straw would fall apart after a few sucks so he's got pieces of plastic laying all around him. I ran away and called the crash crew.
2. He was helping several other AME's disarm and remove an ejection seat from the back seat of an aircraft. The first thing that must be done is to remove the charge that blows the seat out of the aircraft during an ejection. One guy removed the carriage from the seat and handed it to this guy who was standing on the wing. His job at this point is to walk to the edge of the wing and hand the carriage to someone on the ground. Well, he throws the carriage at the guy on the ground and starts laughing. Thankfully the guy caught the carriage and no one was killed.
3. After the first two incidents we figured that they (Navy) would get rid of this guy. Nothing doing. Next, he was being yelled at by his supervisor for some stupid move he made. He can't handle the pressure so he jumps on a tow cart (used to move aircraft around) and drives as fast as he can into the hanger. The hanger doors were open just enough for this truck to fit in and out. The right procedure is to come up to the door, stop, blow the horn and drive through very slowly. This guy goes through the opening at top speed (thank God no one was walking in front of the door at the time)and drives toward the maintenance office. He attempts to drive between two aircraft but misjudges the distance and rips the rear stabilizer's off both aircraft. Cost of repairs was well over 200K.
The navy finally felt that this guy might not belong in his current job so they sent him to the front gate as a gate guard. I felt much safer with him guarding the entire base! Submitted on 07/25/2003
Submitted by:
Steve Harvey
Reference:
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