And they say you can't bite your own nose.

This happened early in my career in VF-211 (Now VFA-211, heavy sigh) So this would in 1980. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VFA-211 The second insignia in the wiki article is the one I wore. The top one is after my time)

So it was rumored at the time that the Russian's larger aircraft like the TU-95 could carry enough ECM gear to spoof the AIM-54 Phoenix. This led to a flurry of gun excercises getting pilots gun Qual'ed prior to the cruise. Hard to spoof a 20mm Vulcan. BUT it does take a lot of practice to consistantly put rounds on target. Even with radar and computer help. We burned through so many towed aluminum "dart" targets that they went to towed banners.

One good thing that came out of this was one of the J.O.'s who was rapidly becoming the "goat" due to social awkwardness and who was rumored to be on his way to the transport community due to "pressure' issues turned out to be a natural in gun combat. The only other pilots to consistantly scored higher were the Skipper Cmdr. Husak, and Cmdr. Powers (3rd in command) who were each flying fighters for 20 plus years. Go figure. It turned him around and he became a fairly decent Tomcat pilot after that. On two different occasions he came back with scores of 37% and 38% rounds on target. This is a really good score in air to air gunnery. Especialy for a newb.

But anywho, this put a lot of strain on the equipment and the Ordinancemen who maintain it. When they painted the rounds different colors so you can tell who's rounds hit the banner target the paint had a tendency to foul the barrels. As the pilots don't want fouled barrels, especially before important, graded, excercises the Ordies often had to pull the 1200 pound cannon assembly to clean it.

Well, they started to get tired.

Now I'm embarrased to say that after 26 years (and two vodka and oj's) I can't quite recall if it was one of our birds or one of our sister squadron's (VF-24) but here's what happened.

Apparently after the last cleaning the Ordies forgot the safety wire on the bolts that hold the cannon's forward bracket in place. After a hectic day's shooting schedule The Very Bad Thing happened.

Yep while swooping in on a towed target firing a long burst the forward bolts backed out enough to allow the cannon's muzzles to do a big circle in the gun bay while firing. Blew off the birds radome and radar assembly. With a negative effect on trim and stability characteristics I might add.

He did make it home from the gun range. Lucky for the aircrew they weren't using explosive warshot and that neither engine ingested a fatal amount of debris. (Tomcats at speed absolutey hate asymetrical thrust) Really made for a spectacular home coming too. That had to be more annoying than and just as shocking as an exploding cigar.

Well thats all for now

BD

__________________
"The beauty of that discussion of averages is that you don't have to be an expert in Apollo or in photography in order to see where this time study "analysis" breaks down. You just have to be, well...not an idiot." -JayUtah

Wow. At least no one got hurt, and the pilot can always say he almost shot himself down.

I'm amazed the engines kept running. Those TF30s had enough trouble with plain ol' air, much less air full of aluminum and who knows what else.

__________________
"How many times have you gone rooting through your junk drawer, muttering to yourself, 'where'd I put that gun?'"

I dont think they were happy at any speed in that situation. IIRC one of the NATOPS procedures for loss of an engine in the Tomcat under certain conditions was just to eject. Dont bother trying to save the plane because you wont be able to.

I thought that after 26 years anything bad automatically happened to the other squadron and anything good happened to yours.