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)
“Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)