These are pictures taken during C Battery, 2/200 ADA Battalion's Annual Training in June 2002. The unit convoyed down to McGregor Range at Fort Bliss and fired 7 of 8 Patriot missiles with the last missile being a misfire. It was neat to see another live fire in a Patriot unit and really neat to have been so close to the launchers when the missiles went off. Here is part 4 of this set of pictures. Enjoy!
The next morning (we spent the night in the barracks on post).
The launcher crew posing for a picture before we get ready to fire.
After a lot of waiting, here goes the first missile from launcher #1.
These missiles are *fast*, breaking the sound barrier less than
a second after the engine ignites. I had my digital camera
set to snap pictures as long as I held down the button.
Missile #1 flying off toward its target.
Another missile from launcher #2.
There it goes. I got some really good pictures of the missiles with
my digital camera, but started having camera troubles about this time.
Another missile picture.
Picture of the dust thrown up by the last missile launch.
Another missile going off launcher #1.
Note how it is angling up. The target was a "potato" being towed by a
remote control plane. The target was being flown in different ways to
simulate different types of aircraft and missiles. We scored hits on
all targets except the very last one. The missile was a misfire on
the launcher so we had to wait 1 hour before we could go down and
safe it. I was in the ECS at that point, so for 1 hour we got out
a deck of cards and played Spades. I have some pictures of that
but since it's inside the ECS I can't put them up on the Internet.
All in all, it was a very successful annual training. We fired 7 of 8
missiles safely with zero injuries. The civilians said some active duty
Patriot units don't do as well or as safely as the Guard units do. :-)
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