The residents of an apartment complex in Tulsa (Oklahoma) got a surprise last week. A bomb from an Air Force jet came crashing into the building. Fortunately, the couple who rented the bombed apartment weren't home at the time, so no one was hurt.
According to Air Force Major General Bud Wyatt, the bomb was a training bomb -- a dud. He said, "We do not take off out of Tulsa with live bombs." The military are still trying to figure out how the bomb got dropped over a civilian area.
The pilot said he didn't know it had happened until he returned to the base. (That inspires confidence doesn't it?)
As a former Navy Bombardier Navigator on A-6 Intruders, I dropped 100's if not thousands of these practice bombs.
ReplyDeleteThey weigh 25 pounds and have a smoke charge in the nose so that the scoring system can tell you how good your hit was (three cameras, one computer, one score).
The story does not say what kind of plane it was, but this type of practice bomb could have been any standard air force fighter/attack plane -- A-10, F-15 or F-16. The video shows an F-16 cockpit canopy and weapons port, but it could be file footage.
THe F-16 and each of these planes is designed so that the bombs can not be dropped accidentally. You must pull three of four switches before the weapon is "hot." So if the pilot did not know he or she had dropped it, the accident report will probably show the bomb was not loaded properly.
It happens every now and then, and there would be no way for the pilot to know that the bomb had fallen off by itself is misloaded, because this type of bomb does not have any communications with the pilot or aircraft like some "smart bombs.' Also a 25 pound bomb does not alter the feeling of a modern fighter the wat a 1000 or 2000 pounder does. In other words, the pilot would never know if it fell off because it was loaded improperly.
Finally, we might not ever know why it happened, because if the pilo made it on to the bombing range, he or she probably tried to use this bomb. If so, the ejection charge would have detonated to seperate the bomb from the slipstream - so any evidence of the initial error might no longer exist.