Here’s a bit of insight into my former life as a helicopter tech: For each maintenance-required item, a code in the form of a symbol was entered on the paperwork each aircraft carried in a book. For example, if it was a diagonal slash in the box, something wasn’t 100% perfect but it wasn’t a problem. If it was a bright red X in the box, it was a problem. This made life simple for the maintainers. You could zero in on big issues immediately and focus work energy on big-ticket items that kept the bird from flying and you could spare the minor stuff down for a quiet day. It’s a very solid system that works, exactly what you want when pilots are depending on the helicopters you fix to be safe and effective.

In the case of the engine on the test stand here, which is claimed to be a General Electric J85 turbojet, what you are probably looking at is a static engine run test as part of a cycle service. Every now and then, airframes are torn down and rebuilt just to make absolutely, 100% sure that everything is in tip-top shape. So seeing the engine run on the stand isn’t a big surprise. You’ll see what the surprise is in a few seconds, though: in the most likely scenario, one of the bolts that was meant to hold down the engine to the stand decided to pack it in and as a result, a few thousand pounds of thrust on afterburner up and effed off to parts unknown. Panic wouldn’t have begun to have scratched what I would’ve been doing if I was associated with any part of this test. I’d be sprinting home to dig up my passport for an impromptu trip to Anywhere But Here.

In reality, this would’ve been a horrifying scene that saw an engine fly until it physically couldn’t, one way or another. I’ve been unable to locate records for this incident, so let’s just hope that a nice, thick cement wall stopped this screamer before “workplace incident” gained a whole new definition. Remember that thing about writing up faults in the logbook? This would have to be entered into the paperwork, too. So, place yourself in the position of the poor soul who knows that his life is gonna suck for a while. What do you write up that properly explains how a jet turbine pulled a Houdini act?