Missiles and Air-dropped Bombs
The risk of aircraft armament cooking off is a significant hazard during pre-flight operations, especially for aircraft carriers. Fuel fires, which can spread across the flight deck rapidly and engulf many aircraft, are the most serious risk. This was a significant contributor to the 1967 fire disaster aboard the USS Forrestal, when such a fire (set off by an inadvertently fired Zuni rocket's striking the fuel tanks of a waiting A-4 Skyhawk) detonated two iron bombs of Korean War vintage which had been loaded onto the stricken bomber, rupturing the fuel tanks of adjacent aircraft and setting off a chain reaction of similarly cooked off bombs.
Read more about this topic: Cooking Off
Famous quotes containing the words missiles and/or bombs:
“At the rate science proceeds, rockets and missiles will one day seem like buffalo—slow, endangered grazers in the black pasture of outer space.”
—Bernard Cooper (b. 1936)
“We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)