just for the record, "anotherF-16crewchief" said that the 421st also planted one in the dirt. this happened in Qatar and was with the 421st, the one that got planted in the dirt was from the 4th FS and that happened at the Utah test and training range 5,000 miles away. Same fighter wing, completely diferent AMU...and yes being in a diferent AMU is a big diference

take it from me that day wasnt fun. the afets rep that put out the fire was given a inert warhead of the aim 9, acft 516 was having maint. done. there was a guy in the cockpit, who did manage to get out before the hit. the way it happened was the pilot came in the wrong way as in taxied down the wrong taxiway. the flight lead told him to go straight after he noticed that his nosewheel steering was jacked up, he came in the wrong way anyway even though he knew there were problems with his acft. they did try to blame the crewchiefs. all i was doing was helping with the recovery and i still ended up giving 11 viles of blood and a urine sample. the pilot that put 1 in the dirt said he was pulling up to the tanker and when he got about 20ft away his plane just started to pull back away from the tanker. i had to give blood and urine for that 1 too. all i did was pulled the missle cover during launch. needless to say our shift hours dropped from 16 to 12

Regarding your munitions question, after the USS FORRESTAL fire munitions were redesigned to survive in a fire for a much longer length of time.

hate to have that happen on my watch--regardless of the finger pointing--how the heck did this happen anyway?

"they come in three's" the two jets are from the 421st black widows from hill afb. they also planted one in the dirt after the jet ran outta gas prior to air refueling...

The safety devices ar there to PREVENT arming on the ground. have to be in the cockpit to give consent to actually arm the munitions and release for it to go boom. But intense heat will set it off!

Those red tags are saftey pins which interupt the explosive train so even if the missile launched it would not arm as long as the pin is retained.

just a question from somebody a little nieve. People always mention that they are surprised that the live ammo on the craft didn't detonate... isn't there some kind of mechanism that prevents the munitions from being active until they are released intentionally? just curious.

If you look closely you'll see that the aircraft that was ran into/being worked on(notice the C-10 and hydraulic hoses) is also carrying live munitions. The individual that manned the Halon bottle fighting the fire until the fire dept got there is an AFETS rep--I hope I got that acronym right. That definetly was not a good way to START a rotation in the sandbox.

If this had happened at our base, our commander would have blamed the maintenance guy for sure! "Well son, what were you thinking letting those jets collide like that!?"