Brake failure might be responsible for causing an army CM-11 tank to fall into a river in Pingtung County on Tuesday, killing three of the five soldiers onboard, prosecutors cited the surviving tank driver as saying yesterday.
The Pingtung District Prosecutors’ Office said that it questioned Private First Class Yang Yen-lin (楊炎霖) late on Tuesday night, and that Yang said he lost control of the tank because the brake and steering wheel were not functioning.
The tank fell off a bridge into the Wangsha River (網紗溪), landing upside down, as it was returning to base from a training exercise.
Photo: CNA
Yang escaped on his own with minor injuries, but the other four soldiers in the tank had to be pulled out. Three were pronounced dead after being sent to a nearby hospital, while First Lieutenant Wu Te-wei (吳得瑋) was revived, but remains in a coma.
Yang was quoted as saying that the braking system did not work, although he hit the brake pad hard, so he tried to make a left turn to run the tank into another tank to stop it.
However, he could not orient the tank because the steering wheel was not functioning either, so the tank toppled into the river, the office said.
No alcohol was detected in Yang’s system, prosecutors said, adding that he was emotionally unstable following the incident, apparently affected by the news of the deaths of his colleagues.
Primary autopsy findings showed that Corporal Chen Ping-yi (陳秉逸) and Private Chang Chih-wei (張志偉) drowned, while Sergeant Chen Shih-kun (陳世坤) sustained a skull fracture, but the findings were not definitive, prosecutors said.
Meanwhile, the army disputed allegations that the tank in question was linked to a graft case last year, in which members of the military allegedly received bribes and kickbacks from a machinery company, which secured procurement contracts with the army and supplied substandard tread blocks used in several models of combat tanks.
The army said the problematic tread blocks were not used in the CM11 tanks, but the M109A2 self-propelled howitzers.
However, New Power Party Legislator Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said the accident was connected to the graft case, and the Ministry of National Defense has to eliminate unqualified contractors.
A report by the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office in July last year said that army officials tampered with a test report on the tread blocks used in CM11 tanks and M60A3 tanks to qualify problematic parts, according to Hsu.
The Control Yuan also took corrective measures against the army following the graft case, which the Control Yuan described as a “structural and systematic corruption,” Hsu said.
“The ministry does not have to use misleading information to avoid legislative oversight... It should proactively pre-empt problematic contractors to protect soldiers’ safety,” he said.
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