Risk Management Magazine

The radios were silent, systems were in the green and the Atlantic Ocean was rolling calmly along the empty white-sand beaches below. “Bird, 11 o’clock,” the left seater said matter-of-factly. “Contact,” responded the right seat, followed by smooth cyclic inputs that guided the aircraft effortlessly toward the one o’clock position.

When an explosion causes a sudden release of heat, light and sound, the energy causes the air around the point of the explosion to expand outward faster than the speed of sound. The blasts produced by these explosives throw shrapnel, extreme heat and piercing sound at their targets. However, perhaps the most dangerous — yet least understood — effect of an explosion is blast overpressure (BOP).

My career, like those of most Army aviators, consists of routine flights that represent a lot of planning. But some of those routine flights turn into memorable events. One of those now-memorable flights was a routine mission transporting two people from Cairns Army Airfield at Fort Novosel, Alabama, to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and then returning.