In my younger days in the Air Force, I was an F-4E crew chief stationed At Soesteberg AB, NL. I was working on the Alert Pad and we had a scramble. Well The pilot had hit the starter on teh #2 engine and it fired up nicely. As the #2 was running up he hit the #1 engine starter and all we got was a short flash and then nothing. I ran over and removed the start cartridge and loaded up an new one and the engine started and the two aircraft taxi to take off. Well all of a sudden the first hang fire cart ignited and took off out of the alert hanger, and then down the taxiway.

Let me explain the time line. We had our alert birds ****ed and standing on a five minute alert. That means the aircraft must get airborne within five minutes. They normally got off in 3 and one half minutes. From teh time I removed the starter cart till the time it reignited was about four minutes. Normally we would take the cart and put it in an ammo can that was on the side of the Tab V Shelter with water in it and that would stop any problems.

Those starter cartridges had black power for it's propellent. Hope this was interesting. When I found out that the huge battle ships used BP in their big guns, I was surprised.

Sorry for the long windedness!!!