The US Air Force suffered some high value losses because pilots and mechanics failed to reveal that they might have screwed up. The AF accident office initiated a program whereby a pilot or mechanic could reveal the screw up and not be punished.
I was working as a Tech Rep on an AF missile program and a mechanic told his superiors that he might have over torqued a bolt resulting in a possible fracture. If the inner part of the bolt did in fact fracture it could have entered the fuel turbo pump causing an explosion. They pulled the center engine and entered the tank to look for the other end of the bolt. They never found the bolt part but the did find that the inside of the tank was full of sand and particles of fiberglass. The sand came from the fuel storage tank and the fiberglass particles were from the filter system, which had been destroyed by the entrained sand. They had lost two missiles from this particular launch pad when the missiles blew up for no apparent reason. The missile in question would have met the same fate if it were not for the fact that the mechanic came forward.
They could never determine how the sand got into the storage tank. Maybe it resulted from somone elses screw up.
