The dumbest thing you ever did while in the service...

[cwartyman]

I hit a battery switch relay connector(not the battery itself but it is a relay that switches between the U-batt and E-batt) on an F-18 while the engines were turning to get it unstuck with a metal speed handle, didnt look to see that the RTV was in place hit the terminal, arced the speed handle and it threw me back 3 feet on my ass. Never again did i fail to check if the RTV was intact. Electricity is no fun when it goes through you.
Mack

[amber]

There was a lot of tall grass and brush around my bunker. I thought it would be easy to burn it. Opened up a can of napalm and spread it around over bushes and bamboo. Seems I didn't get back far enough and when I lite it off, blew me off my feet. I'm tellen you, you can't beat your way through jungle grass and bamboo with your bare hands. Didn't get burnt but was reallt smoked and stinkey.

How big was this can of napalm? I loaded a LOT of BLU/1B bombs (napalm - actually called incendegell (probably not spelled correctly) on F-100's in 'Nam. These bombs were 110 gallon capacity. We only filled them with 100 gallons to allow for expansion in the heat. Sometimes they still seeped through the seams a little.

[Rick]

We used Tide and JP 5 to make napalm on the Independence. Have no idea how they set the stuff off but it must have been a phosphorus of magnetism detonator. Only saw them use it in practice and remember seeing the ocean on fire and it would still be burning when we steamed over the horizon.

[amber]

The BLU/1B napalm bombs we used had at each end the following: aluminun end cap, under it was a electrically armed fuze which was screwed into a white phosphorus igniter which was screwed into the bomb itself. In addition, there was a coax cable with a fitting like on a 2 way radio antenna. This fitting was attached to the fuze.

The other ends of the coax ran through the bomb body to the center where there was a threaded well (hole). In this "well" a initiator was screwed in. The initiator was basically a type of power source (battery). A small thin cable lanyard was attached to the top of the initiator. The other end of the cable was attached to the aircraft plyon bomb rack arming seleniod. Before the pilot dropped the nape, he activated a switch which would send power to the arming seleniod causing the end of the cable to be "trapped" on the seleniod. Then when the nape was actually dropped, the cable would pull the top of the initiator sending power down the 2 cables to the fuzes. Now the fuzes were armed. When the bomb hit, fuze exploded causing the WP igniter to rupture. If you know anything about WP, air is what starts in burning. And by now the aluminun bomb containing the nape has ruptured too sending that nasty stuff all around. I'm sure most have seen pictures of these "fire bombs" being dropped.

NOTE: If the nape was going to be dropped from low altitude, we used 2 sort of cone shapped end caps - same on both ends of the bomb. If more precision bombing was required, we used a standard nose cap as just described and on the tail we installed an aluminiun tail fin. This would cause the nape to drop like a bomb. With cones on both ends, the napes just tumbled through the air.

NOTE: None of this information is restricted or classified. As far as I know, napalm is not in general use anymore.