As a maintainer in the CF your given a safety breif once a week by law. we sit and learn about safety issues with the equipment we work on and that of the other trades we share a building with. As an armourer you cover top to bottom the weapons, electronics and HYDROLICS we service. you are taught princeples theories and practices till it hurts.

One day a MCpl who had better then 10 years as an armourer had a M109 self propeled howitzer come in for serviceing. The crew complained about the guns hydrolics leaking and the gun not wotking proporly. So this soilder tech of wisdom and years of knowledge set to looking for the problem. Starting with the most common and working from there. he got into the vehicle's turret, and found the pool of fluid desided to look around the system find the hole the fluid was comming from, at this point in time he realised he had left his flash light behind and couldn't quiet see behind the hydrolic cylander so he opted to use his cigerret lighter to shed some light. He lit the lighter and to late realised it was a pin hole that was spraying hydrolic fluid (oil) and blew himself out the back hatch on fire. I can't confirm if he died or not but I'm pretty sure he dosn't smoke any more.

Submitted on 12/02/2005

Submitted by: C. Grey
Reference: Safety Lecture

Copyright © 2005 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Neutral: Personal Account
I'll defer to moderator Jack for the military particulars (I'm ex Navy and just an National Guard Bandsman now, and know little of the inner workings of the M109!), but this IS an interesting variation on the old "lighter in the gas tank" gag. I'll keep this as a PA, if only for the cartoony visual of this jamoke getting blown out the back of the tank!

Greg said:
Neutral: Personal Account
I agree it's a good variation - hope Jack gets a look at it before it goes through. :-)

Jack said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
As a Personal Account, it's a keeper. Quite believable and also quite stupid! Actually, this is more of a variation on a grain mill explosion than a lighter & gasoline explosion, but it obviously worked. The technical term is "Fuel-Air Explosion." and even paper dust will detonate quite nicely.

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