F-16 Fighter Fires At School In New Jersey

www.nbc10.com ^ | 3:56 pm EST November 4, 2004 | www.nbc10.com

[crushelits]

F-16 Fighter Fires At School In New Jersey

Incident Happened On Training Mission

LITTLE EGG HARBOR, N.J. -- A National Guard F-16 fighter jet on a nighttime training mission Wednesday fired 25 rounds of ammunition that tore through an intermediate school. No one was injured.

The military is investigating the incident that damaged Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School shortly after 11 p.m. Police were called to the area when a custodian heard what sounded like someone running across the roof of the school. The custodian was the only person in the school at the time. Police Chief Mark Siino on Thursday said police officers noticed punctures in the roof. Ceiling tiles had fallen into classrooms and there were scratch marks in the asphalt outside the building. The 2-inch long bullets are made of lead and do not explode, said Col. Brian Webster, commander of the 177th Fighter Wing of the New Jersey Air National Guard.
 It was unclear why the shots were fired, Webster said.

[the invisib1e hand]

Screw that. Discharge him altogether.

i was gonna say, give 'im a medal.

[Pukin Dog]

These were slugs, and I doubt the kid knew they were even there.

Live ammo is carried at times. Sometimes with tracers so the students can learn 'hosing'.

Barges are not the best gunnery targets, most of that is done over land in the desert for AG, but for AA, a towed target behind another aircraft is the best tool.

Nobody CAPs with lead. When you need to bring something down, you use the real thing.

[Walkingfeather]

If they were made of depleted uranium I think the gubbmint just bought themselves a jr. high school.

[Gunrunner2]

Oh, and it is possible the pilot was on the range and merely put the switch to the "arm" position. In that case the pilot should have been at an altitude and heading that would preclude any harm IF the gun went off.

[spunkets]

Whoa dude cops! Run!

[wideawake]

Wouldn't it make more sense to put a couple barges out in the ocean for gunnery practice?

It's a recreational fishing area, and also an area where cruise ships go back and forth between Atlantic City casinos and points north and south.

There would often be small craft in the vicinity at night.

[kingattax]

LOL....they gave him too many detentions

[Centurion2000]

And the War on Illiteracy takes a new approach.

[politicket]

Any truth to the rumor that the school's French teacher surrendered?

ROTFLOL!!! I hereby nominate this as the FUNNIEST post of the day!

[Gunrunner2]

Doing hi-angle strafe and letting go a burst at 7,000'?

That's WAY hi-angle.

Possible he was in the pattern and put the switch to arm and it cooked off.

3.5 miles ain't that far. . .is it? I admit not shooting the 20mm a/g, but for my A-10 we strafed out to 12,000'. . .and it was aimed, not lofting bullets.

Even a .22 has warning about bullets flying up to a mile away, and a 20mm might reach that far from 7,000'. . .nose up or not.

Thoughts?

[archy]

That's not an F-16.

Kor-rect. GWB flew the F102 *Delta Dagger,* AKA the *Lawn Dart*.

Good thing for the folks who pull building maintenance on that school it wasn't a Warthawg. Though I think the last NY Wartie unit was the 138th FS [former] Boys from Syracuse, now driving the F16 since the early '90s or so. Come to think of it, they've had a few problems, too.

[Strategerist]

National Guard folks do some pretty strange things.

Air National Guard pilots are, on balance, more experienced and better than Air Force pilots. Very different from the rest of the military.

[Nowhere Man]

In the immortal words of Joe Piscopo....

"It's an 88 Johnny, it shoots through schools..."

It's actually close, I once converted 20mm to the English system and I got something like ".80 caliber." B-)

[Rokke]

Slow down Pukin. You're getting ahead of yourself. Here are a couple facts...
1. The jet was on an active air to ground range. Having the Master Arm switch on is normal procedure.
2. You need to squeeze the trigger on an F-16 to fire the laser on the targeting pod. You squeeze it to the first detent for the laser, all the way for the gun. Hit some turbulance and there isn't much difference between the two.
3. It is not unheard of in any jet for bombs to be dropped inadvertantly or for weapons to fire due to electronic queertrons.
4. As you are well aware with Harry Schmidt, you cannot assess blame until the facts are known.
5. I'm damn glad it wasn't me.

[searchandrecovery]

There WILL be consequences for public schools that fail to perform!!

Nice. Yes, there's a little-known codicil in the No Child Left Behind act addressing corrective actions for bad schools. First step is 25 rounds at night.

This is in NJ, though - maybe the school was built on a target range by mistake.

[e_engineer]

IIRC the trigger was used for several different functions depending on the weapon selected.

Googling for M61A1 failures found no instances of unintentional discharge malfunctions, but wire chafing was an issue with F-16s in the early years.

Hope for this pilot's sake that it turns out to be an electrical malfunction.

[Blueflag]

Warthog wouldn't be at FL7, more like 700 feet ;-).

[Poohbah]

You need to squeeze the trigger on an F-16 to fire the laser on the targeting pod. You squeeze it to the first detent for the laser, all the way for the gun. Hit some turbulance and there isn't much difference between the two.

Perhaps I'm just really slow to "get it," but it seems to me that putting the laser illuminate function on the gun trigger was not the best idea anyone's had lately...

[Last Dakotan]

Pilot was a former student.

Usually they just come back to toilet paper the place.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Physically not possible for the pilot to burst only 25rnds.

He could if that's all that remained in the system.