101 uses for Thunder Flashes (or "What NOT to do with Ordnance!")

[falcon5nz]

Right. This thread was inspired by this thread on thunderflashes. So I would like any humorous stories that have occurred through the un-approved use of ordnance or pyrotechnics.


Three come to mind for me, all by Kiwi troops IIRC (2 in Vietnam, 1 in training).

One was bloke in Vietnam who knew a particular officer was on a longdrop style latrine and decide to flip a smoke grenade into the hole to dye the officer's rear end. Apparently he looked like a Baboon for a while.

The second was a guy sitting on watch. He decided to practice twirling the gun round his finger. With a loaded weapon (Safety on, of course). A loaded M-79 "Blooper" to be exact. Well apparently the safety wasn't reliable on these weapons, so, yep, you guessed it, Negligent Discharge. Luckily it had just passed the vertical, and there was no one in front of the Kiwi lines. All the guy did was open the weapon, push the spent shell into the ground, reload, reapply the safety and, once again, you guessed it, resumed twirling as if nothing had happened. (The way it's written in the book is far better, I'll see if I can find it)

The third was by Willy Apiata on a training ex. He had modified a para flare launcher by removing the flare part and inserting a thunder flash to wake the recruits he was training. He was in tent, aimed it out entrance and pulled the string. It fired, launching the TF into a tree, and with the help of Newton's 3rd Law it rebounding straight back into the tent. From memory he said he thought "This is gonna hurt." Rang his ears for a bit but didn't wake one recruit.

Right there's mine. Your turn now.

And, while I feel that I'm preaching to the choir with you guys, I've been asked to put this message in:

Messing with ordnance, even if it's "just" pyrotechnics is not safe.​

Cheers

Nick

 

[pointblank0]

Cheers for that. I remember when I was at school, I think it was about '92 ( yes, I'm still a baby). I had a thunderflash taken from the stores at our cadet hut. It was one of the short yellow ones with the canvas pull striker thing. I chucked one up into the false ceiling in the school hall and what a laugh. BOOM!!!! Polysteirine everywhere and ringing ears all round.

 

[exat808]

In Hong Kong in the 1980's we had a few hundred 2" Mortar smoke bombs to dispose of. Our adopted (safe) disposal procedure involved removing the primary cartridges for incineration elsewhere and we then made small stacks of the bombs usually with 15 to 20 on the bottom rising pyramid like. A few of the bombs throughout the stack were primed for ignition using black powder and safety fuse. Heat transference from bomb to bomb ensured ignition of the entire stack.
We noted that on occasion individual bombs burt more energetically and became propulsive albeit for a few inches. This gave rise to some cunning Ammunition Technician thinking resulting in us strapping single bombs onto pieces of polystryrene and cork that littered the shoreline of our burning ground - result "2 inch mortar smoke - rocket ships". Some of these travelled some considerable distance over the waves before the plastic or wood ignited sending our toys to the depths. The seabed just off a particular part of Stonecutters Island will be littered with the results of our endeavours. Safe harmless fun - in the sun!

 

[falcon5nz]

Seriously, No one else has anything?

 

[V40]

OK, I'll bite,

When I went down to our State Academy for two weeks, one week was Booby-traps and Trip Wires (very Hard course, almost made me a nervous wreck). The other was for "Flash-Bangs" and there use in SWAT. This course was fun until one day when an accident occurred by, well you know it's this guy I knew, yep that is the right one, I think or beleive it could of even had me involved?

We were lined up on a door about to make a breach and bang. In Ohio you literaly have to look inside the house or room to see if there might be children near your drop zone. So here we are lined up, me standing off to the left a bit with two other members and to the right of the door there were three more individuals. Now when the door was breached, the two guys one each side are armed with H&K-5/SD's.

Now you have to remember that we were using Def-Tec.#25's back then. So anyhow, there is also two tires lined up on the other side of the doorway so the thrower has something to aim for when the door is breached. Also the first team to make it into a tire didn't have to pay for any beer the whole night. So the breachers do their job and now everything starts to slow down in my mind. And I mean real slow, the kinda like this going to hurt? I see myself slowly toss the the #25 out from my hand and it is headed for the first tire. Great, no buying beer tonight:tinysmile_hmm_t:. But as we are about to enter the 25 hit the edge of the tire and then it bounced off of the tire and went outside the door at about 3-4 feet above the ground. Half of the team see's it the other's are going to step on it as they are going in. Now mine you, back then and if you got one inside a tire the tire took all the flash and bang so we hardly at all ever wore earplugs. So, I yell as loud as I can "GRENADE" and I dive towards these guys to hit the ground. They see it finally and start to rush over me when it goes off. We are all temporary blindid and are suffering some hearing loss. When it was all said and done it looked like a war zone. The guys slowly were starting to get up one by one. They were shaking their heads and all were trying to clear their ears. They all looked at me, dusted themselves off, and told me that this payback was going to be a female dog!

The instructor came over and asked me what went on and I told him the story. I was shocked when he couldn't stop laughing!

In the end they got me back and it nearly took a few years off of my life. The team wanted me to have some more, or should I say, "all day" banging into the tires the rest of the week until it was second nature to me.

I don't know about any others during that time in the mid 1990"s, but we were absolutely not to ever throw in a #25, ever! Everything was tossed in.

That is my story and I ain't saying no more!:crossedlips:

Mark
V40 (Still embarresd even today) See, I can't even spell words right tonight).
Now, again, as usuall, the nightmares will start up again and I will seek assistance from my therapist and he will right up a few presciptions (Good ones at that).

 

[Infanteer]

While going through infantry battle school which was in the winter, we received "fresh" rations each day which for some reason included small oranges. My course warrant officer thought it would be fun to insert training fuzes from practice M69 grenades into the oranges and then let them freeze in the snow. After they were frozen solid he would randomly through them towards groups of troops while yelling the obligatory "Grenade!" so that we would hit the dirt just before the orange exploded.

A common demonstration on most battle school courses in those days was to place an arty sim under the steel shell of the old M1 helmets (before we received kevlar) pull the igniter and launch the helmet 70 feet (give or take...) into the air to show how powerful these simple pyrotechnics are.