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:
“Our missiles always make too short an arc:
They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect
The curve of earth, and striking, break their own;”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“We cannot be any stronger in our foreign policy—for all the bombs and guns we may heap up in our arsenals—than we are in the spirit which rules inside the country. Foreign policy, like a river, cannot rise above its source.”
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965)