Another Broken Arrow

Over the weekend I was thinking about the fun Broken Arrows brought to this young man.  Lots of trucks, cranes, missiles, military types all over and I was always a sucker for anything destructive!

And I remembered of a little incident outside of Portland, Oregon.  I can not even begin to remember the year or even where in Portland we were - so I had to be mighty young!

Now one of the ways to go to the Portland zoo, back before they build a superhighway straight into there was to drive southwest through Portland and then take this little road that went through a small tunnel.  As we reached the tunnel, an Air Force jeep came through and blocked off the roadway.  No big deal - that meant the day was about to get more exciting.

My father got out, identified himself and asked what was up.  Before the poor MP could even answer - there came this horrendous crash and shriek of metal from the tunnel.  Yeah, something big had just made a mess.  Dad and the MP took off running - and hey, no one to stop me - I went to!  And, what a sight I saw!

Seems a tractor trailer was hauling a missile back towards Portland and had impacted the warhead with the top of the tunnel.  The missile was now ejected out of its cradle and lay half on, half off the cradle.  The nose cone was mashed horribly.  Father let lose a series of oaths you would not have believed!

Dad grabbed the radio, ran for the Portland side of the tunnel and radioed into the Base for a decontamination team, full geared inspectors, a suit for him and two cranes to be brought in from the south.  What an exciting day!

Of course, I got to go through decontamination and you know I really do not like stripping in public.  Just a modesty issue I have never overcome.

In due course of the day, they found the warhead (which was supposed to have been removed prior to transport!) was intact; very little radiation was evident in the area - other than the roof of the tunnel and ground below; and it took close to a week to extract that puppy from the tunnel and reload onto another carrier - this time with the warhead safely removed!

I never got to see if I glowed in the dark or not.  Oh yeah, good times!