An Army veteran has finally summoned up the courage to watch graphic footage of the moment a grenade launcher nearly blew his head off when it exploded in his hands.
Adam Knowles runs YouTube channel Ballistic High Speed on which he demonstrates the awesome power of modern weaponry with ultra-high speed video.
But he found that power turned on himself when a rocket-propelled grenade launcher suffered a catastrophic failure as he fired it last month, shattering his cheekbone, fracturing his skull, and leaving him with extensive burns.
‘Holy s***!, I can’t even see my helmet leave the frame,’ he said as he watched the slowed-down footage yesterday.
‘It’s no wonder all the doctors told me I ought to be dead.’
Adam Knowles has more than 400,000 subscribers for his YouTube channel Ballistic High Speed on which he demonstrates the power of modern weaponry
All seems to be going to plan as Knowles prepares to demonstrate the impact of an RPG back-blast on a ballistic dummy placed immediately behind him
But as he fired the RPG-7 ultra high-speed footage caught the moment the impact hit him with smoke and flames emerging from the barrel of the weapon
A split-second later Adam was consumed by a white-hot fireball that blew his helmet of and nearly killed him
The final sequence in the day’s filming as intended to demonstrate the danger to anyone in the vicinity when a grenade launcher is fired.
The crew had positioned a ballistic dummy immediately behind Knowles to show the impact of the fiery back-blast produced by the RPG-7.
Their previous test had shown the dummy’s arm blown clear off its body and half way across a field, and now they wanted show what would happen to its head.
But slow-mo footage shows smoke emerging from the stock of the device as the grenade is fired before the weapon itself explodes, engulfing Knowles himself in a white-hot blaze.
His helmet and safety vizor were blown off, and his ballistic vest was dangling from his body as he was thrown unconscious to the ground with the camera still running.
His colleagues immediately run into frame with one yelling ‘Call 911’ as Knowles struggles back to consciousness and demands to know who has been hurt.
He was airlifted to hospital where he received multiple skin-grafts for his badly burned arms, had shrapnel removed and ran up a $300,000 bill.
He also suffered a dislocated jaw, traumatic brain injury and a brain bleed.’
‘It still takes a lot of wound care, I’m not out of the woods on that yet,’ he told viewers as he returned to the channel.
‘The nerve stuff you never know.’
He said he has ‘no recollection of the incident after the countdown’, and tried to analyze what had gone wrong with the reactivated RPG.
‘This RPG is about as good as it gets when it comes to reactivated launchers,’ he said.
‘However a weld is still a weld and that means around the weld is a little bit more brittle so there is a small inherent risk.
Adam reels from the blast as the smoke clears and he falls to the ground unconscious
Crew members attempt to dress his wounds as an air ambulance is summoned to airlift him out
He received multiple skin-grafts for his badly burned arms, had shrapnel removed and was treated for traumatic brain injury, a shattered cheek bone and a dislocated jaw
Knowles returned to the channel for the first time yesterday to watch the footage of the moment that nearly cost him his life
He fears that an inherent weakness in the reactivated RPG may have caused the blast
‘The rocket launcher basically exploded.’
He said he still has a ‘solid few months’ of rehabilitation ahead, but feels ‘a lot better’, and pledged to return to his YouTube channel which has attracted more than 400,000 subscribers with videos filmed at up to 250,000 frames a second.
‘This isn’t going to stop me, we’re back at it full tilt,’ he added.
‘I’ve still got a little bit of a limp but we’re not done.’