By Graeme Hosken, Michael Schmidt and Johan du Plessis
A female artillery officer risked her life on Friday in a desperate bid to prevent members of her battery dying from their own anti-aircraft gun.
But the brave, as yet unnamed officer was unable to stop the wildly swinging computerised Swiss/German Oerlikon 35mm MK5 anti-aircraft twin-barrelled gun. It sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun firing position.
By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader magazines, nine soldiers were dead and 11 injured.
A ninth soldier, a woman, died moments after landing in Bloemfontein, after being airlifted by a South African Air Force helicopter to Pelonomi Hospital in Bloemfontein.
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The accident occurred just before 9am when a battery from 10 Anti-Aircraft Regiment in Kimberley began a live-fire exercise at the Army Combat Training Centre at Lohatlha as part of the SANDF's Exercise Seboka - an annual joint conventional military exercise involving 5 000 soldiers from 18 army units, plus members of the SA Air Force, SA Navy and SA Military Health Service.
It is believed the soldiers were killed when the gun jammed moments after the exercise began.
When the female officer went forward to help the gunner clear the blockage, another shell was accidentally fired, causing some of the unspent ammunition in nearly-full magazines to explode.
This, in turn, caused a "runaway". There was nowhere to hide.
The rogue gun began firing wildly, spraying high-explosive shells at a rate of 550 a minute, swinging around through 360 degrees like a high-pressure hose.
The unknown officer tried to shut the gun down but she couldn't because the computer gremlin had taken over. Her fate was unknown at the time of going to press.
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