Here is a little story dealing with charging of an Oxygen cylinder or, was it a Nitrogen cylinder. Back in the late fifties an Air Force tech was in process of charging the oleo-pneumatic landing gear struts on an F-86 when the pressure in the bottle dropped below minimum pressure. The bottle he was using to contain the Nitrogen was in reality an Oxygen bottle that had been repainted Grey with a black stripe. The bottle was metal stamped near the neck “For Oxygen Service Only”. Oxygen cylinders as you may know have left hand threads so in order to use it for Nitrogen service the technician had to cobble several fittings together to attach to the bottle and still use a conventional threaded flex tube to connect to the Schrader valve on the strut. He filled out the paper work and took the bottle to tech supply for refilling with Nitrogen.
Although the paper work requested Nitrogen the technician at tech supply saw the stamping on the bottle that said for Oxygen service only. Despite the fact the bottle was painted grey with a black stripe he removed the original threaded fittings and replaced them with left hand thread fittings and filled the bottle with Oxygen. The bottle was delivered back to the maintenance hangar with the original cobbled fittings installed.
The technician went to an F-86 and began to service the nose strut when it blew up in his face killing him and starting a fire that consumed about ten F-86s in the hangar.
Who made the first mistake?
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The Cat