-I was at Fort Campbell's civilian firing range when a guy up on the benches turned around with his handgun in hand, pulling the trigger repeatedly. He flagged me and the two others I was with while doing so. I yelled at him to stop pulling the F'ing trigger on a firearm pointed at me. Turns out he had had a misfire and was pulling the trigger trying to figure out what was wrong while turning to ask someone to help him!! Two weeks later, I was in a briefing about overweight Soldiers and NCOES schools. The Post CSM got up on stage and imagine my surprise to recognize him from the range.
-We were at the range as an aviation company. After having fired multiple iterations in flight from our M134 mini-guns, we had to clear the range, land and shut down so the big guns could come in. About ten minutes later, three Blackhawks go hot onto the range but the trail aircraft isn't firing anything. That bird come into the hotpad, also the FARP, and starts troubleshooting their systems. Next thing you know, with two Blackhawks on the range firing, this 2.75" FFAR leaves one of the tubes of the Blackhawk on the hotpad and arcs out over the entire range, passing in between the two aircraft on the range firing their M134's manually, and disappears somewhere over the berms. No one was hurt and the rocket detonated somewhere in the woods off of our range. The pilot who did this was an instructor pilot who had mistakenly hit the fire button after being told by his CE that the tube was disconnected. It wasn't fully disconnected.
-Balad, Iraq. We are getting the snot mortared out of us. An OH-58 is spooling up to go look for the mortar team. As the pilot pulls pitch, he does an AOAS (Altitude Over Air Speed) take off. This is normal for being in real dusty conditions since hovering and then nosing it over will cause the aircraft to be enveloped in blowing sand causing the pilots to lose visual with the ground and horizon. So you pull an armpit full of collective and pop up to 100' and then nose it over. As soon as they nosed over, a 2.75" FFAR Flechette rocket leaves their tube and impacts about 20 meters from the outside wall which has guard towers. No one was hurt and the cause was found to be due to erratic electricity. You get a TON of static electricity built up in the rotors and the aircraft when taking off from a sandy location and evidently, this is what caused the rocket to fire. I later read that a new grounding wire was installed to prevent that from happening again.
-Back in 1996, I was crewing my MH-60K and working with some new SEAL's. Their team leader and his assistant were the only "real world" operators/SEAL's on the aircraft. The other six guys being brand new from BUDS. The mission was just fast rope training, but the students had live rounds as they were going to fast rope into their shooting facility. We had just come to a hover over the target building and the first guy on each side was getting onto their ropes when I hear a discharge. I look to the back, right of my guy getting on the rope to see the guy behind him slowly leaning back with his face bloody mess. The trainee on the rope had reached out to take the rope in his hands when he felt a bad dig into his right side where his Beretta was holstered. He took his hands off the rope and tried to readjust his pistol, firing it into the face of the trainee behind him. The trainee had just turned his head to the right, so the round went through his face from left to right, taking out a lot of teeth and cheek skin in the process. If that dude wouldn't have turned his head and leaned back a little to hear what the SEAL Instructor was saying, he would have caught it between the eyes. The guy on the rope was on his way back to "Fleet" THAT NIGHT! The victim lived and eventually completed his training and served for some time on the teams.
**Personally, I've had one AD. It isn't an "Accident" in my mind, but a momentary loss of common sense. The gap left by the loss of common sense allowed Dumb@$$ to step in for a bit.
My AD cost me a new kitchen sink. I was standing in the kitchen, checking and clearing my weapons. Three of them were still clear from the range, but my CCW had one in the pipe. I dropped the mag, pulled the slide back, the ejector had broken and I didn't know it, and then I rotated the slide release and let the slide start moving forward. When it got to the mid position, I had to pull the trigger to finish releasing the slide. This is on an XD 45ACP. Since I didn't check the chamber for clear, and the lack of a round popping out didn't grab my attention, when I pulled the trigger to let the slide go, BAM! Kitchen remodeling by Springfield. I hated that damned sink and faucet anyway, but it sure didn't deserve to be shot! The .45 round, a PDX1 Bonded JHP, made a hole in one side of the sink about the size of the round, but when it went through and exited the other side of the sink, it took out a chunk about 3" in diameter. I had numb hands, ringing ears, bad powder burns to my stomach and a much worse headache.
While at the range, the ejector had broken off on the last round. I had packed everything up, put my SD magazine into the weapon, released the slide, put it on safe and into my IWB holster. When I was in the kitchen, I had a hard time pulling the slide back. Thinking it was due to my headache, which leaves my left side weaker and "buzzing", I had pulled the weapon into my stomach while putting more force on the slide, but still pointed in a safe direction just out of habit. When it went off, I got bad powder burns. I also got laughed at by my wife when she came home from work. She said she was very glad I didn't hurt myself, but she was even more glad that finally, she had an excuse to get rid of that sink. So the new sink and faucet ran a tad over $500. A costly bit of stupidity, but the lesson learned has stuck with me! I thank God no one else was around and no one, specifically ME, was hurt!
So now, whenever my wife wants to replace something in the house, she says, "Hey Tom, you want to do some Springfield remodeling? I think the couch is in need of replacement!"
I'm a firm believer that no matter how long you've been around weapons, no matter how much training you've had, and I've had a LOT after 21 years active duty, you will, at some point, have an AD. The only way to ensure that you minimize the damage and mitigate the risk of injuring yourself or another is to always keep your weapon pointed in a safe direction.
