This isn't a gun story but it's funny.
It's from,
http://www.glocktalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=208088&perpage=25&pagenumber=1
In 1966 I was a flight instructor at the Army Helicopter Flight School at Ft Wolters, Mineral Wells, TX.
There were many instructor and student fatalities but this wasn't one.
Some accidents are funny!
Not all accidents are too serious, especially when no one gets hurt.
Back at Fort Wolters again.
We did much of the training at "Stage Fields".
They had six parallel "runways", called lanes, about 2000 feet long and about 200 feet apart.
Three lanes in East traffic, three in West. Which made interesting base legs. (yes there were some bad mid-airs on base)
Under many downwind legs were small "sod touchdown areas".
A practice engine out autorotation to dirt was called a "sod" touchdown.
It's harder to do a sod touchdown because the skids tend to grab the ground and flip you over. On a hard surface you just skid.
In 64 when I was a student we were required to solo in and practice solo hard surface touchdown autorotations.
We had to be good at sods, it was on the check rides and it was failing if the student didn't do a good forced landing into the marked sod area.
In the late 60's the Army kept lowering the requirements in order to get more pilots through flight school.
The sod requirement was done away with completely for the student.
The instructors were to demonstrate 3 sods and NO more and sign off the demonstrations in the students records.
The student was not to touch the controls during the demonstrations.
Well, what most of us civilian instructors did was not sign off the sods until the last day or two of training.
Most of us kept teaching the students sod autorotations knowing we would be fired if caught.
If something happened the instructor had to swear he was doing a demo and screwed up.
I had given my student an engine failure to the sod under the downwind leg.
He did good and as we came to a stop in the sod area another instructor, Tommy, called for an autorotation to the same area.
I picked up and moved off to the side.
Tommy's student flared too low and too late and pulled pitch too high and Tommy was too late correcting so all they could do was ride it out.
They went across the ground, nose high, skidding on the heals of the skids with the tail rotor chewing up the ground and flying apart.
When they came to a stop in a cloud of dust someone came on the radio and said, "Hey Tommy, why don't you let the student try one now".
Later, some said that was me, but the only thing I could say was, "Holy s***!!
Tommy stuck with the lie and I said when he came skidding by me Tommy was the only one on the controls.
Thats the same thing I thought the first time I saw those pic's. What good did they think it would do. Obviously it was not a great hiding place as it seemed to be and certainly not much in the way of safe storage.
