One day the mandrel became stuck and the operator decided to forego the safety procedures. Instead of having the tube moved to the safety of a covered pit he decided to see what was causing the problem, so he looked down the muzzle of the gun. The mandrel then released itself and shot out of the gun, taking off his head on the way.

This incident occurred many years ago and is the only fatality I know of related to this process. I work at the Arsenal and have heard the story directly from the engineer (now retired) who investigated the accident. The incident occurred a couple days before Christmas. The CO of the Arsenal and the dead man's pastor waited in a car outside of his house for over an hour waiting for his wife to return from Christmas shopping so they could deliver the bad news.

Since I am unsure what repercussions there could be in relating this story please do not use my name.

Submitted on 09/16/2006

Submitted by: Anonymous
Reference:

Copyright © 2006 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Your name shall remain sacrosanct! I'm familiar with the arsenal in question, being a part of the NY Army National Guard. This is certainly believable, and certainly one of those "safety violation hiccups" one occasionally hears/reads about in safety briefings. While this is more a major lapse in judgement than true stupidity, it will wash as a PA. BTW 200,000 PSI is a LOT of pressure (superheated steam is a mere 1500 PSI).

Sheryl said:
Neutral: Personal Account
Thanks for the story. I have to defer to James' familiarity with this type of armament as I have no experience with it. However, I'll stay neutral on it. As James says,it sounds more like a lapse of judgement than true stupidity.

Fitzroy said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Yeah, with good media references, I'd support making this a full blown Darwin Award. I can't imagine training doesn't exhaustively cover risks of that nature, and clearly there was an established procedure for these situations. If the war situation were so extreme that our nation might be conquered for lack of more guns, then this haste might have been noble. As it is, I see it as pointless and thus also sufficiently stupid.

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