Papa Vincente and the exploding toilet
My Granpa Vincente was Italian and served the first half of WWII fighting the allies until the Italians changed ends at half time so to speak.

Although I never met him (he died in the early 60's), there are many family tales of his wartime exploits of ineptitude and un-heroism, my favourite being "Papa Vincente and the exploding toilet".

Vincente was a ground crew engineer for an Italian torpedo bomber squadron (SM 79's for the geeks out there). In the early days of the war not much happened out in the Mediterranean so Vincente, being very bored volunteered for a course to transfer to flight crew (engineer/gunner)to break up the tedium.

After a week or so of ground training he went up on his first training flight in a formation of 3 bombers. It was meant to be a simple flight down the coast to get familiar with things, a bit of a jolly really. They even took a picnic lunch, bread and cheese and a couple of bottles of wine. However, It seems the lead navigator made a little error and the formation strayed a little too close for comfort to Malta which was under British control.

As the formation turned to head back to base they were bounced by 2 Hurricanes and split up. Papa Vincentes plane was harried and hounded by one of the Hurricanes for 50 miles back up the Italian coast. The aircraft was riddled with bullets despite the best if rather woefully inaccurate efforts of Papa Vincente and the other trainee gunner. Out of ammunition, Papa Vincente went to the back of the airplane where, next to the rather primitive chemical toilet, spare ammunition was stowed.

BOOM

As he was reaching for the ammunition boxes a stray cannon round from the Hurricane tore through the side of the aircraft and hit the toilet blowing it to bits and spraying its contents (along with a fair bit of shrapnel) all over poor hapless Vincente.

Ground crew it seems would only empty the horrible toilets when they were nearly full .... and Vincente swore blind that this one was well past its due time! Messy!

The story ends happily enough. All three bombers made it home although two were quite badly damaged and it is presumed the Hurricane pilots got home safely as well. Vincente was the only casualty with shrapnel wounds from the exploding toilet, some of which became badly infected which put him out of the war for 6 months.

On his return to his squadron he suprisingly declined the offer to resume his aircrew training and never flew again.
( RadG Drinking Mojitos in the sun, Mon 6 Jun 2011, 14:49, Reply)