Danny,
Not a run amuck Landrover, but a story from my dim and distant past does relate. Picture the scene, a small airfield in the East Midlands circa 1980. The unit operates Chipmunks (AES) and the " last lander" is sat outside the hangar awaiting the attention of the Groundcrew before bye byes. Inside the hangar, SAC Erk, who has had a bad day, upset the Flt Sgt and been detailed to empty the waste bins has hatched a plan. The little Massey Fergie, with hand throttle, with its towed rubbish container is aimed down the centre of the hangar, throttle set and Erk lets out the clutch, jumps off, and begins emptying the bins into the trailer as it slowly progresses down the hangar. About half way along the hangar, a fod bin slips from his grasp, and makes contact with the hand throttle. Massey Fergie leaps into life and accelerates away along the hangar. Erk, with the realisation of his plan, and its failure, attempts, in vain, to catch the runaway train.
The 1940s hangar was not one of Britains finest, being of fairly flimsy construction the door that was struck by the Massey Fergie actually managed to stall the tractor, and even wavered for a few seconds. It then succumbed to Newton's third law of motion and fell off its mountings. Falling outwards the door hit our waiting Chipmunk at the hind quarters, flattening the aft third of the fuselage, the fin and tailplane. By this time, our hero Erk, had decided he would rather be charged for being absent, than for a new Chipmunk, so scarpered to avoid blame. Thankfully, no one was hurt in the incident and yes, Erk got clobbered. I can vouch for its happening as a good pal of mine was the "gang boss" on the Cat3 repair team that spent several months rebuilding the Chipmunk. Sadly, in those days, the MU did the full recovery to Flight test, and the team somehow managed to reverse connect the elevators during the repair. Causing a lot of consternation to the pilot selected to test it. It's as though the aircraft had decided its time was up. This time potential disaster was averted because the professionalism of the pilot made him query why pulling the stick back put the elevator down
Needless to say, lots of red faces and not a lot of pride in the whole episode. No one injured though, so "alls well that ends well".
Smudge
