The wildfire that has ravaged South Jersey, and caused several developments in Stafford and Barnegat Townships to be evacuated, started this afternoon with a flare dropped by an F-16 on a training run at the Warren Grove Gunnery Range.
This got me thinking immediately about the fighter a couple of years ago that shot at an elementary school Little Egg Harbor Township, dropping 27 rounds onto the school from its 20-millimeter cannon.
Turns out they're both from the 177th Fighter Wing of the New Jersey Air National Guard out of Galloway, Atlantic County. Oooops!
And according to the New York Times article, there are several other occurances of problems with the fighters in New Jersey.
In January 2002, a New Jersey Air National Guard jet crashed near the Garden State Parkway, but the pilot parachuted safely, and no one was injured. In June 2001, an F-16 on practice run dropped a 25-pound smoke bomb that burned 1,600 acres of pine forests in Ocean County. And in 1999, another bombing run went awry and 11,000 acres of pine forests burned.
Forest fire 10 percent contained; caused by training flare
Stafford, Barnegat evacuate communities as fire spreads
Wildfire at Warren Groove (video)
Warplane Strafes a School in New Jersey (11/5/04)
2 comments:
I get all my New Jersey-related news from this here site, so I hadn't heard about this F-16 story yet. That's incredible! I also love the tongue in cheek nature of this particular cartoon. It's got a bit of a sinister quality to it when you work across the pic from left to right to discover the jet and then the humor hits you. Quite nice.
B+/B
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