Sergeant receives safety award from ACC Published Jan. 30, 2006 By Senior Airman Joel Mease 20th Fighter Wing Public Affairs SHAW AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. -- A Shaw member has recently received the Flight Line Safety Outstanding Achievement Award from Air Combat Command. ACC Safety Awards recognize individuals, groups and units for their efforts in mishap prevention.Staff Sgt. Coda Whitehead, 20th Component Maintenance Squadron Egress section, earned the distinction for discovering ejection drill gun carts in four F-16CJs were out of date. The drill gun cart pulls the shoot out of the ejection seat when the seat is ejected from the aircraft, said Sgt. Whitehead."This really was a life or death type of find," said Master Sgt. Barry Stahl, 20th CMS Egress section chief.Sgt. Whitehead said he discovered the error while inspecting on an ejection seat. He noticed the serial numbers on the drill gun cart did not match up with what the technical orders said they should be. After looking into it, the West Virginia native discovered an incorrect expiration date was given for the drill gun cart because of the incorrect serial numbers.The real expiration date, it turns out, was two years overdue, said Sgt. Whitehead.He then looked at other F-16 drill gun carts here and noticed three more had incorrect expiration dates, said Sgt. Stahl."These overdue items might have actually worked if there were an ejection, but a lot of time and money have been put into finding out how long these parts can actually function before they have to be replaced. We recently had a D model F-16 crash last spring. Had that plane been carrying an expired drill gun cart we might have had lost two pilots," said Sgt. Stahl.Sgt. Whitehead was awarded this honor for his tremendous attention to detail, said Sgt. Shahl."Sgt. Whitehead always pays close attention to the smallest of tasks just as if they were a large task," said the EGRESS section chief.