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This is a question Have you ever seen a dead body?

How did you feel?
Upset? Traumatised? Relieved? Like poking it with a stick?

(, Thu 28 Feb 2008, 9:34)
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How does little shreddy bits of a dead body score ?
Set your wayback machines for the summer of 1987, and dial slowly in on the British Aerospace factory in Hatfield, Hertfordshire.*

Look closely and you'll see a tall gangly youth cycle grimly up to the flight test and assembly building, hang a sharp right and park his bike somewhat cheekily behind the portacabins nearby.
Why yes, gentle reader, 'tis I, the youthful Duke E. heading to a summer job of mind numbing tedium tracking the correct assembly of very expensive aircraft punctuated with occasions of great exitement when that oh so careful assembly fucked up.

There were three of us in this portacabin poking at the wheezing aged terminals that passed for a computer system** at BAe and trying to work out whether the latest machine in flight test was actually complete enough to fly. Occasionaly a whiff of jet exhaust would drift in through the open window as the plane's engines were would up one by one to make sure they did as they were told. All in all another tedious day...
Then came the most almighty Bang-Wumph! noise and the room went from bright sunlight to a mottled pink gloom suffused with the faint, but rapidly approaching sound of screams and a distinct smell of burnt.
Being inquisitive chaps we poked our heads out of the door to see what was going on just in time to see a couple of really very distressed flight test crew go pelting past us and to watch the last of a cloud of smoke dissapating above the aircraft.
We shrug and turn to go back into our portacabin, which is unnacountably flecked with dark red dots.
One phone call later and we discover that in an astonishing double act of stupid a fitter had not only neglected to fit the inlet guard to the engine under test, but had then gone to stand infront of it so he could get a good view of the impeller blades.

Sucked in, shredded, roasted, and blown out the back as fine spray all in under 2/25ths of a second.

We got the site maintainace crew to hose down the wall and gave up work for the day...

*Now closed, and turned into a shopping centre
**We had a secretary, she had an even more ancient word processor that still took 8 inch disks
(, Tue 4 Mar 2008, 17:41, 4 replies)
Sounds like
a prime candidate for the Darwin Awards.
(, Wed 5 Mar 2008, 10:08, closed)
not so much a dead body then
more like a dead veneer?
(, Wed 5 Mar 2008, 12:09, closed)
Bird
Kinda beats the average bird ingestion. Did the engine function afterwards?
(, Wed 5 Mar 2008, 12:53, closed)
The Engine
Was sent back to (if I remember right) Pratt & Whitney for refurbishment, then refitted to the plane after the inquiry.
(, Wed 5 Mar 2008, 17:05, closed)

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