The incident occurred about 30 years ago at the Garden Island naval dockyard in Sydney Australia. A large diesel powered ship was in the dockyard for repairs and some work needed to be done on the engine. A civilian contractor was employed to do the job and though he had considerable experience working on trucks, he hadn't worked on a ships engine before. None-the-less, ships diesels work the same way as truck diesels, they're just bigger so everybody was happy.

The engine was running and the mechanic wanted to stop it. It was inconvenient to leave the point where he was working near the air intake to go to the control panel to stop the engine so he decided to do what he had often done when working on trucks.

There are two ways to stop a diesel engine, cut off the fuel supply or cut off the air supply. The mechanic had often stopped truck engines by placing his hand over the air intake and decided to to stop this engine the same way. The air intake for this engine was too big to be covered by a hand so he sat on it. Last thing he ever did, they had to strip the engin down to remove his remains from the cylinders.

Submitted on 02/28/2005

Submitted by: David Lincoln
Reference: Not Available

Copyright © 2005 DarwinAwards.com

Daniel said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Thank You! Classic arrogant stupidity!

Jack said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
I agree with Daniel. It's a pity that there is no verifiable reference, it would have made a good DA.