Midway Airport: The First Seventy-Five Years |
by Christopher Lynch Lake Claremont Press |
I have always been thankful that at Monarch there was never any dangerous incident with fuel. One story I heard almost seems like an urban legend since I can't verify it, but if true, it is truly frightening.
One Monarch employee told me the story of a fueller, who was hooked up to a fuel pump one day. He had the top of the truck open, so he could monitor the amount of fuel being pumped in. As he sat there, he saw a kid across the fence, who seemed to be tinkering with something. The fueller watched, out of boredom, as he waited for the truck to fill up. The kid placed down a glass bottle on the sidewalk, and into the bottle he dropped a bottle rocket. The fueller looked on as the youngster then lit the fuse of the rocket. In an instant, the rocket went screaming into the air, shooting straight up, before beginning to arc high in the air, across the fence, and suddenly like a lightening strike, right for the fuel truck. Then with a precision matched only by so called "smart missiles" used in the Gulf War, this mini-missile shot through the hatch of the fuel tank, plunging into thousands of gallons of jet fuel.Who knows what went through the mind of the fueller in the split second that this rocket hurtled towards his truck and into the tank. But as the rocket plunged into the tank and went "Fssssssst." The rocket went out, as if it had just dropped into a bucket of water.
What happened? Well, Jet Fuel is Kerosine, and denser than gasoline. I had heard from fuellers and mechanics that in order to light Jet fuel, one almost needs the intense flame of a blow torch. And in the case of the bottle rocket, chemistry, it seems, won the day. However, needless to say, it isn't recommended to try this sort of stunt at home with Jet Fuel, or for that matter, with a tanker filled with it.
Continue the Tour: West Ramp