The Arms Room Debacle
This is Steven Petrick Posting.
One of my best achievements in the Army was that during a major inspection, three of the five unit Arms Rooms I was the battalion staff officer responsible for supervising the maintenance of passed with out a single noted fault.
The annoying thing was that I came so very, very close to a perfect record.
Each of my two arms rooms that had a fault had one. In BOTH cases, I had found the specific fault myself on a last pre-inspection visit on my own part. In one case, the unit armorer, after being notified of the fault (a loose flash suppressor on an M60 machine-gun), failed to tag it. I can regret that I did not stand there and watch him tag it before I left, but I had other duties to perform, and he not only forgot, but placed the weapon where it was certain to be the first one the inspectors saw.
The second fault in the other arms room involved an M-16 rifle. This was a "magic rifle" in that when it was turned in, I happened to be in the arms room (again making a final pre-inspection), and snapped up and said aloud "something is wrong with that rifle". When I broke it open a quick look inside showed that someone had disassembled parts of the weapon that they were not authorized to do, and had placed them back into the weapon incorrectly. This was a fault that by regulation could only be fixed at third shop. So again I directed the armorer to tag the weapon, but in this case I watched as he did so before I left. The company commander came in after I had left, saw the weapon had a tag and demanded to know what the problem was. He then took it upon himself to order the armorer to "correct the problem". The armorer did so, but was not aware that not only the hammer spring was in incorrectly, but the sear spring had also been installed incorrectly. As fate would have it, of the ten rifles on that rack the inspectors were only going to look at one, chosen "at random", and that was the one (Magic Gun).
So close, but defeated by Human Error (in the first case) and human Hubris (in the second case).
One of my best achievements in the Army was that during a major inspection, three of the five unit Arms Rooms I was the battalion staff officer responsible for supervising the maintenance of passed with out a single noted fault.
The annoying thing was that I came so very, very close to a perfect record.
Each of my two arms rooms that had a fault had one. In BOTH cases, I had found the specific fault myself on a last pre-inspection visit on my own part. In one case, the unit armorer, after being notified of the fault (a loose flash suppressor on an M60 machine-gun), failed to tag it. I can regret that I did not stand there and watch him tag it before I left, but I had other duties to perform, and he not only forgot, but placed the weapon where it was certain to be the first one the inspectors saw.
The second fault in the other arms room involved an M-16 rifle. This was a "magic rifle" in that when it was turned in, I happened to be in the arms room (again making a final pre-inspection), and snapped up and said aloud "something is wrong with that rifle". When I broke it open a quick look inside showed that someone had disassembled parts of the weapon that they were not authorized to do, and had placed them back into the weapon incorrectly. This was a fault that by regulation could only be fixed at third shop. So again I directed the armorer to tag the weapon, but in this case I watched as he did so before I left. The company commander came in after I had left, saw the weapon had a tag and demanded to know what the problem was. He then took it upon himself to order the armorer to "correct the problem". The armorer did so, but was not aware that not only the hammer spring was in incorrectly, but the sear spring had also been installed incorrectly. As fate would have it, of the ten rifles on that rack the inspectors were only going to look at one, chosen "at random", and that was the one (Magic Gun).
So close, but defeated by Human Error (in the first case) and human Hubris (in the second case).
posted by Federation Commander at 3:59 PM
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