Some years ago, when I was in the Navy, I was assigned to stand watch on what was called the ASROC deck (ASROC was an anti submarine weapon; it had a high security classification at the time). This deck was at the middle of the ship away from the Quarter Deck (where the gangway was). The lone sentry carried a 1911, chamber empty, full mag in the gun.
The procedure for relieving the watch was: the current watch pulls the weapon, drops the mag, open the slide and locks it. He then sets everything down on a table and gives the holster to the new sentry. New sentry picks up the weapon, drops the slide, pulls the trigger, inserts the mag and holsters it.
This particular morning (just before 4AM) I was the off going watch. I did my stuff, then the oncoming watch picked up the gun, inserted the mag, dropped the slide, pointed the gun up and pulled the trigger. Oops. I will say the sound of a .45 going off in a room the size of a guest bathroom is deafening to say the least.
Dont know where they came from, supposedly everybody was asleep, but we were surrounded by armed security (all gunner's mates I think) in a matter of seconds.
The round took out some electronics conduits; IT guys had a job to fix it the next day. The oncoming watch lost a stripe, and fortunately nothing happened to me. But after that when I was relieved I stood next to the oncoming close enough to reach him and watched closely until the weapon was safely holstered. I have never forgotten that incident, and to this day many years later I have never had a DA of my own.
