Risk Management Magazine

It was a bright, sunny Arizona day near Fort Huachuca as my friend and I headed out to enjoy a ride on our motorcycles. Just three days earlier, I had purchased a new 1997 Suzuki TL1000S. This blood-red beast showed just 63 miles on the odometer as I turned south off Fry Boulevard onto State Highway 92.

A very dangerous part of the maintenance personnel’s job is the launch and recovery of the Shadow. This incident occurred during the recovery of an aircraft where complacency played a contributing factor and the crew chief was not following the proper procedures.

It was a good training day. We were conducting a command-sponsored train-the-trainer event for M-249/M-240B machine gun qualification tables to show subordinate unit leaders what right looks like. So far, we had executed well and “right” looked pretty good.