just wondering what some of you old salts have seen!

I have an uncle who served in WWII, and he has a good story about the "wooden bullets" the Germans used in (IIRC) the Hirtegan (sp.) forest. The sounds they made coming thru the trees and the damaged they caused when they hit someone next to ya. Maybe a WWII vet can comment on them...., my uncle had nightmares about 'em, sounds like something worth missing to me.

Mike

Through a series of screw-ups some bonehead once called 8" fire pretty damned close to my OP during training.
Had it been any closer, and I might not be here.

Talk about pissing your pants!

Some funny, some scary.  I was USAF long ago.  These things always seemed to happen when I was working on F4's, never on other planes.

I remember the first time I worked on an alert bird.  Those were F4's that were tasked with direct nuclear bomb runs to Moscow.  These were loaded with live nukes.  Gave me the willys every time I worked on one.

Once, I was making a max AB run on an F4 with a new ground man.  On shutdown, one of my engines caught fire and the ground man took off running and left me in the burning plane.  Fortunately, the shop truck had just pulled up with my supervisor and he and the other guys helped me get the fire out with a restart.  I got out of the plane with the unmistakable intent of killing the ground man, but the boss saved his life.  He was transferred out because nobody would ever work with him again.

We were working on a plane just before a mission.  It was minor work so the bomb guys let us continue.  Usually, they would not let anyone work on the plane when they were loading munitions.  This time they did.  While loading a a bomb, a CBU as I recall, they dropped it off the loader.  The human mind cannot conceive of how fast men can move when something like that happens.  I still laugh when I remember it.

Drove up to the fuel shop one night in the dark and all these guys are outside swinging at something on the ground.  We pull up with our headlights on the ground and they had just killed a 7 foot Cobra.  I am still glad we did not get there 5 minutes sooner.


Edited for typos.

I was riding in the back of a 5-ton at Wildflecken once and our dumbass leader fucked up his land-navigation and we wound up in the impact area of a mortar range.  LT Bolo figured this out when a round impacted close enough to rattle our teeth.

And, that same trip, a mortarman hung a round with his head over the tube (track-mounted tube) and somehow his LBE got snagged when he tried to move.

He didn't make it.

RIP SPC Samano.

I have read alot about WWII german weapons and munitions, but never really heard of "wooden bullet" except for maybe training rounds? Anyone know anything?

Me and a few others were clearing a small area on the inside edge of an impact area so some engineers could do a land mine demonstration on a M60 tank.  While we were out there, artillery was shooting into another range area a few clicks away and suddenly we heard an explosion a few hundred meters away from a "short" 155mm HE round.  You never seen guys run so fast and a HMMV move.  One reason for running was, we were concerned that that might be a spotting round and a whole volley would soon come.

Friendly Artillery ISN'T!!!!!

Here is another not so fun one.  When I was in EOD school, we were being driven out to one of the Demo ranges.  The stupid Bus driver took us into the impact area, the problem was that F-16 were coming into the the Live range to use Maverick missles.  We could hear range control bitching out the Bus driver.  There was almost fast exedus of Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, and Sailors out the back door to find some cover, like a crater.

Most of us Soldiers and Marines knew what Mavericks do especially to thin skinned vehicles.   It is funny now, I just remember a bunch of wide open eyes and the phrase "FVCK!!!"

At MCAS Iwakuni in 1984, I saw an A-4 doing touch and goes forget to lower his landing gear. I think it was VMA 311 on Det. from MAG-13. He had a tank under each wing so the damage was minimal but he was handed his ass by the Skipper.

I was doing lane training with ROTC at Camp Shelby, MS, in late May.  The TAC Officer was the one in charge of the pyro, and when the cadets called for smoke (react to sniper...me), he threw a white smoke.  Well, that damn grenade, for the first seconds, threw out nothing but what looked like phosphorus, promptly setting our AO afire (dried pineneedles on a hot, rainless, windy day).  We were breaking out our half empty canteens, and even pissing on the fire.  I had this moment of realization like:  "Oh shit, I can just see the newspaper now...'Cadets die in self-inflicted wildfire'."

Some smart trooper found this big-leafed plant (still don't know what it was) and was able to beat the flames down.  Then the grenade started shooting out smoke, and we were all choked with smoke, and couldn't see anything.  Luckily we had finally put the fire out, but it was damn scary at the time.

-Zmeja

Feb. 27th, 1991, Jalibah Airfield Iraq....
Watching the Bradley in front of mine take a direct hit, from a anti-armor ambush, seeing the rounds streak by my own Bradley, still feels like it happened yesterday. Next to that would be the pinging sound of rounds impacting the armor plate, talk about you a**hole puckering up!

Then in the Ga. NG, as a 11C, on a 4 deuce mortor track, during live fire watching a dumba** smoking in the back of the track around all those loose cheese charges and powder bags. Made me old before my time.

In 1966 I was a young EOD tech at my first EOD unit (45th Ord Det) at Ft Polk, LA.  We had a lot of Civil War ordnance we were inerting for the Mississippi State Museum.  One day I picked up a Ketchum (sp) hand grenade and it started hissing at me.  I think I broke the world shot put record in getting rid of the thing.  After I checked my pants, I realized that it was only pressure escaping since the grenade had been on a gun boat at the bottom of the Natchez River for over a hundred years.  The older guys with me found the incident very amusing and kept reminding me about it until I left for Vietnam.

It's a toss up between two events:

when they opened the doors on the bird as we were approaching Torrijos-Tocumen, and you could see tracers flying all over the place- I think that those last 30 seconds seemed like an eternity.

the other time was when we were in Iraq, and we moved out on foot, as a company to meet some agressors, and this numbnuts mortarman is carrying a tube with a round in it, and out of some stupid assed bad habit, "dry" fired it when we started moving out.
So there's this big loud "BANG", I look over my shoulder and this dickhead is laying flat on his back, eyes big as saucers, holding a smoking tube.
My first thought was what a dumbass followed very quickly by "where the FUCK did the round go?!"
Everyone had pretty much the same reaction as we all hit the dirt and waited for an impact.
It landed far away somwhere (which makes sense since it'd be awful hard to shoot one exactly straight up.)

Needless to say we lost any element of suprise we had too.

Reforger '78......Germany......HUGE friggin' snow snake!!!!

West Pac 94-95, 2 guys are taking out a AH-1W to test after maintance, They were testing on the beach and ended up planting the cobra in the sand. You could see that the skids hit the sand and as they are still traveling forward the marks are getting farther apart until the gun digs into the sand and it looked like a Cobra yard sale past that point. Both guys climb out and hump a few miles across the desert to the SAR camp to get a ride back to the boat. I had the duty with the Pilot the next day and he wouldnt tell me why they crashed, only that both engines had failed, by the looks of the site he was a 100 knots when he hit the sand.

#1.
Late 80s, one morning we were running PT through an enlisted housing area in Ft. Stewart and we see a couple of big craters. Turns out the "professional soldiers" of the 48th Infantry Brigade, a NG unit, had turned a self propelled 155mm gun around 180 degrees from the impact area and put two rounds next to a couple of thankfully uninhabited homes. Amazing how NGs think booze and Howitzers mix.

#2.
At the time I was reassigned to the 24th ID they got Bradleys to replace the M113s. We had a very long familiarization training period which culminated in a FTX. At one point we were in a defensive posture and we were supposed to defend against enemy armor. Somebody thought this would be a good time to give out the vehicle mounted smoke grenades for the forward mounted launchers so we could test them. We saw the "enemy" coming, so a neighboring LT told his PLT to pop smoke to screen. He had positioned his troops in front of his Bradleys. For those who don't know, the vehicle mounted smoke grenades are WP. I saw the smoke grenades go off, and then from the dense cloud of smoke I heard really awful screaming and saw  helmets and weapons come flying out followed by stumbling troops who were covering ther eyes and trying to breathe. Only one guy  out of about 20 had the presence of mind to put on his M17A1. A halt was called for the exercise. After the PLT was medevac'ed for chemical burns they came out and took our grenades away. The LT was verbally reprimanded. Oops.

Ft Bragg in 86.  While I was with 1st Socom.  There was show for the civies and politicos showing RDF capabilities.  We were supposed to have a leaflet drop that day which got cancelled due to prior incident.  The Air Farce was supposed to do a lapes drop right in front of the bleachers we were sitting in.  I see the aircraft coming in and notice that it is quite high.  All of a sudden it goes into a dive.  Then you can see the ailerons going full up and the plane trying to level out.  I and the guy sitting next to me both say "Oh S**T!!! and the plane pancakes on the runway.  It skidded for over a mile before it hit the tree line and exploded.  The vehicle came out the tail intact.  The load master fell out the back and suffered broken bones.  3 Guys in a hummer in the tree line were killed in the fire (which we could feel in the bleachers)  The pilot and navigator died, the co-pilot survived with serious burns only because upon impact, the nav (who was standing in the cockpit door for verbal communications) was bounced into the co-pilots lap which protected him from the yoke.

Straight home and right to the phone to call some AF buddies of mine to make sure they were still alive.  

On another occaision, not so bad, I was driving a deuce at night using blackout lights.  E-6 says take this road, so E-5 me does.  He swears we are on one DZ and I was sure we were on another.  35 MPH we hit a 4' drop with a complete field kitchen and 2 troops in the back.  Part of the field kitchen came out.  I immediately stop, run around back to check on the guys.  They are buried under baking sheets and utensils.  We dig them out and ask how they are.  From one PFC "Damn, lets do that again!!!!!   I didn't know you could jump a deuce!!!!"

I was with D Co. 2/34th which became 3/7th. Were you there for when 3/15th was 3/19th? What company were you?

I was with C Co. 3/19 then it was changed to 3/15.We sure as hell chewed some of the same dirt at Ft. Stewart.

[i]Another "Small World" tidbit[/i] ....

I was in 82d Aviation Brigade, pulling Staff Duty that night.  

We had just been fielded the AH-64.  As it got dark, got a call in requesting one to search for debris with its FLIR sight.


Chris

Holzgeschoss 33 7.92x57 Mauser cartridges.

The wooden slug was designed to split into splinters and go in every direction as it passes through the body. It creates a wound that could not be operated on and left the man to slowly die of pain.

Once when I was stationed in the UK, while doing a log-air shipment of 8 nuclear weapons, a thunderstorm suddenly blew in while we had 4 of the weapons in the aircraft and 4 still on the flatbed trailer. Lightning blew a chunk of concrete out of the hot cargo pad that had to be 3 feet across. That was about 15 feet from the end of the flatbed.

If it had hit one of the weapons (OLD generation nukes with sensitive HE), nobody knows for sure what would have happened. We had the last 4 weapons loaded on the aircraft in record time and it got the hell out of there. I don't think my sphincter unclinched for a week.

I'm glad that I wasn't a team chief on that operation. The Dull Sword paperwork it generated was horrendous.

MRCR...you want to talk about a small world, I was just coming off cQ duty one morning getting ready to get on my motorcycle which I kept parked behind the barracks.  I look to the side and see one of the guys from 7th group wandering by from a night of excessive drinking and sleeping God only knows where.  He looked familiar, so I offered him a ride.  It turned out to be a guy I worked with and went to high school with several years before.  The scary part was he was still a little drunk to be a passenger on a motorcycle and almost caused me to lay it down a couple of times...

Not Combat -

Took the accident pictures when we dropped a motorwhaleboat of the ship onto the pier and a sailor.

Taking the Pacific Command 2nd place heavyweight champion into custody for AWOL in Subic.  Was SP Officer and all I had was my brassard and steel toes.  Had a few petty officers from the ship that I had grabbed for support if needed  (But we aren't on duty. YOU are now, I wanna keep this from exploding.  They saw what was happening and they wanted even less to do with it than I did.)  Was in the area west of the Magsaysay Traffic circle if that puts it in perspective. Was standing in the middle of the street and the jeepneys were dodging him.  Shows yah how big this guy was.  His normal demeanor made Mike Tyson look like a choir boy.  I had convinced him to walk back to the gate, and flagged down a Provost Marshal "Green Hat" (permanent duty SPs) and asked them to give him and a couple of guys a ride back.  They didn't want to until I reminded them this guy was more or less on a armed and dangerous wanted poster equivalent and if we could get him back quietly it might save some real problems.  Besides, I am a LtJG and you are a PO2, would you rather have to explain a report chit because you didn't do this or have me maybe get in trouble for hijaking you??? So one of the guys gets in the truck and as he is getting ready to get in and all of us are just kinda BS'g and are relieved nuthin untoward happened, an idiot Green Hat comes up and takes a swing at his head with a baton.  Seems he wanted to restart a previous confrontation.  My "shield" took him down, I got hima and the truck moving before it hit the fan.  Bout 3 weeks later he goes AWOL in Japan again, comes back on board to even scores before he goes to the slammer, put the OOD and POOW and Messenger of the watch in the hospital (broken jaw, concussion and nasty black eye, and just general thumping respectively) goes on down to the First Class Mess and gets into a fight which eventually involved all the shipboard senior enlisted physically before it ended.

An A4 fly a missile profile sneaking across a hot range when we had birds free about 5 minutes before the shoot was to start, luckily CIC called and got the word it wasn't our target.  (our measured time for handing a contact off from from search radar to targeting radar, slewing ans acquiring, slewing the rail and bird away was 7 seconds) so we had time to confirm it wasn't.  Came damn close.

Almost shot a target tow jet down one time.  I was an extra safety observer confirming clear bearings, should have been "no, no, no, clear) and the CO and Weaps Boss give the Open Fire and key the gunnery key.  Well it was "no, No, " boom, boom ,boom , "Cease Fire"  Weaps Boss is standing there shaking, we could see puffs close to the plane.  "Shit, I never closed the key, what happened?"  IIRC the interlocks were incorrectly wired in the last yard period but as thaat was the first time using the bridge key it hadn't been fully or correctly tested.

Saw one of the old fleet tugs in San Diego that had been hit by a string of dummy bombs instead of the tow. You could see one hole all the way through the superstructure and the main mast was about 12 -15" in diameter and halfway up it had a 10" hole right through the middle.

Hey Everyone,
The first of my scarey experiences was Team Spirit 1989, in Korea. A CH53 crashed a few hundred meters in front of my position, disappearing below the hill we were dug in on top of. A huge fireball rose up, blocking our vision of the landscape, for a second. We ran down and started pulling the Marines off. Better then a dozen were burned to death. Those who survived bailed out of the falling aircraft, and hit the rice paddy. They were submerged below the water line when the bird blew up. One of the Flight Crew, I think, the Crew Chief, was screaming at the top of his lungs when we got there..."Get me the fuck out of here! Hurry!" He looked manic. We ran into the still burning wreckage, and started pulling away the debris he was buried under. When we pulled away the last of it, his body was severed from under the left side of his rib cage on a downward angle to the inside of his right thigh. He looked down, saw the wound, looked up at us, and died. The cause? The aircraft was overloaded, and the pilot misjudged the loss of lift when he flew over the steep edge of the terrain. This caused the bird to drop, and smack it's tail on the hill side, losing the rear rotor. Loss of control followed.

At another point in time, during Desert Sabre I passed a burned out T72. There was a hole about the size of a softball in the side. There was puddle of something on the ground outside the tank, that smelled horribly in the heat. One of the guys in my unit pointed out that the hole was from a Depleted Uranium Round, a Silver Bullet. And the puddle? That was the troops inside the pressurized tank, or so I was told...I swear I saw a tooth laying in the puddle.

Later, at the end of The Ground War of Desert Storm, my unit was pulled back to a location called Ras Al Mushab. It was basically an airport. A large troop transport aircraft coming in from East Africa, I think, crashed on the runway a few hundred meters from our tents, killing better then eighty troops on board. Bodies and parts there of, were everywhere. You could say that was memorable...Many were saved as a direct result of the effort of the Navy Corpsman in our unit. One of my buddies recieved a Navy/Marine Medal for his assistance in the life saving efforts.

Well, that's enough of a walk down memory lane for tonight.
Take care.
Respectfully,
Harry

Ah yes, "Pink mist" aka DU or Depleted Uranium shells. They do some nasty shit to armored vehicles! I personally haven't witnessed anything too bad, but while I was in Korea we lost an M113 off Freedom Bridge..landed hatch down in hte Imjin..lost 1 LT and 4 or 5 soldiers. A major's driver got into an accident while driving his HMMWV...the Major took 7' of pipe through the chest and lived. Afew peopel tried to take on tanks and lost...68 tons squishes a human pretty good.

Re: Wooden Bullets

Stryker_11A,

"Holzgeshoss" makes perfect sense. That's German for "wood bullet".

But don't you think it was 7.62x57 instead of 7.92?

Incidentally, I spent almost 5 years in Germany, living about 10 kilometers from the edge of the Hurtgen Wald. We spent many weekends camping, hiking, and exploring there. For a military/history buff, it's fantastic, if somewhat eerie. We found every thing from intact bunkers to old, faded photos to unspent munitions to grave markers. We left almost everything where we found it, but I had to keep an SS NCO's ceremonial knife and an old GI (circa 42-44) mess kit. It was completely intact and I still use it on camping trips.

I didn't know anything about the Hurtgen Forest until I lived there. American history is woefully inadequate in detailing it. It was probably the biggest ass-whipping US forces took in in one place during WWII. After 6 months and 18-20 thousand casualties, we finally just went around it. In retribution, the 8th Air Force leveled every single structure in the nearby city of Duren, a city of about 150,000.

So much for worrying about civilian casualties and collateral damage, but it was very effective.

Fox,

Just by your posts, I can tell you were stationed in Thailand (or maybe Viet-Nam) and Germany. I was one of those munitions types you were talking about. I spent my first 4 years as a 461X0, Conventional Munitions Specialist and the last 18 years as a 463X0 Nuclear Weapons Specialist/Technician.

Cobras! I still have dreams about cobras. 30 years later, I still won't walk after dark without a flashlight (and a sidearm). One night in Thailand, I came home to find a cobra in the corner of my bathroom. At first I thought it was a dirty towel, but when I started to pick it up, it moved. I pissed myself, slammed the bathroom door and went to look for a broom or a stick or something. Not being able to do that, I opened the bathroom door and the front door of my apartment and threw a boot on the cobra, hoping it would go out the front door. It didn't budge. It just struck at the boot. I then went outside to the storage connex and got a fuel can full of gas. I brought it back in and filled a coffee cup full and threw it on the cobra, with the intention of throwing a match on it. (Did I mention that I was drunk as six sailors on shore leave?) Fortunately the match wasn't necessary (I can just see me trying to explain to my landlord and my 1rst shirt, "I burnt down the building trying to kill a cobra in my bathroom") because as soon as the gas hit it, that snake moved like greased lightning and went out the way it came in, a hole in the floor.

I never took a shower or slept in that apartment again. I slept in whorehouses and hotels for the next two weeks until I got another apartment. This time, on the third floor!

I hate cobras.

The chow truck

2 incedents, Both at Grafenwoer, Germany

1st one was the least--we were on shit detail to be OPFOR for an MLRS BN and our driver turned out to be a shit detail veteran.  He got lost and managed to drive our 6-pack Ger minivan up the only non-blocked road from down range.  We were getting pissed because this guy was lost and then we heard a few BOOM's.  We looked right and saw some slower dim tracers--but they were high up.  Turns out that we were down range from an Apache live fire of Hellfire!

2nd occasion at Graf--
In 96', we got locked down for 29 days because someone lost an M-16. (turns out to be a mechanic that went to the class 6 and it was stolen out of the hummer)
anyway...we were searching on foot patrols all over that area of Graf, (I was given a crash course in using and calibrating the metal detector, theft was suspected).  All these areas were supposed to be cease fire and no hot ranges. Well, my PLT SGT got mixed up and we ended up crossing a range when tracers flew right over the berm we were behind.  Turns out that we were in the middle of Bradley live fire one berm away from the targets!

That one got him a negative NCOER.

(edit to add:  on those patrols of downrange, we found a case of C-4 and 4 LAW's that were covered with a pancho.  Also many cans of c-rat crackers.)