Headline says Humvee but as you can see it’s a truck not a Humvee
Well, technically, it was the Air Force that screwed up, since they don’t let the US Army play with anything larger than helicopters and small planes.
It does look like a truck from the photo, but on the tape from the TV station it might be a Humvee, and the truck was being used to pull it out. Either way, if it landed in my driveway I’d try to stake a claim to it…
that reminds me you can be pretty far out from Ft. Bragg and hear the artillery practice. I guess people near there are used to it.
It’s definately a HMMWV.
It’s confusing because at one point they show a LMTV truck but it appears to be there to help with recovery.
The cargo that was dropped is seen in the helicopter shot near the end being driven out on a lowboy trailer. It looks like a damaged soft side HMMWV.
I hate it when I drop my load early in a Humm Job.
I’m guessing that that’s the end of one pilot’s military career.
Probably not. They were testing either new equipment or new procedures or both. Suffice it to say, the test failed. But the error may have been in the tested variable, rather than pilot or Pathfinder error.
But it got into the press and embarrassed the Air Force - that is the cardinal sin.
does the pilot press a button to release the load? or does someone else do that ?
“I dropped the load too early,” the load-master ejaculated.
The load-master does that. All the pilot does is try to fly straight and level. What happens with the cargo is somebody else’s job.
There is a positon called the “loadmaster” (AFSC: 1X2A1) whose reponsibility it is to load, position, secure, maintain, and in the case of an airdrop, actually execute the extraction. The pilot in this case may have made an error in indicating position or readiness to the loadmaster, but it is the later who opens the cargo doors and releases drogue chute to effect payload extraction.
Stranger
I’ve seen videos of C 130s dropping cargo from very low altitudes , maybe 30 feet or less. I assume they do that when they don’t have a good runway to land or the runway is damaged. They don’t use the big main parachutes for that type of drop.
If they accidently dropped it into my back yard could I keep it? Could I deny them access to my land and prevent them from recovering the vehicle?
A C17 flying 30 feet above my house would piss me off a whole lot more than them dropping a HMMWV into my backyard. Unless it landed on my cat.
No and no. You cannot claim salvage to an owned piece of materiel or property that was accidentally or incidentally deposited on your property, and you cannot impede the owner from making a reasonable effort at recovery. If someone deliberately drove a vehicle onto your property and abandoned it, that may be a different story; at a minumum you can have it removed as a nuisance or charge for storage if it is left for a longer period than reasonable to retrieve it.
Stranger
The terrible Travolta movie Broken Arrow had a nice line:
Impede? Absolutely. Prevent from recovery? Not legally.
Cite: I’ve seen it happen. Local PD were called, they ended up packing up the balloon & bringing it out to the pilot/crew.