An army veteran has finally worked 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 the YouTube channel Ballistic High Speed where he demonstrates the awesome power of modern weapons with ultra-fast video.
But he found the force turned on itself when a rocket-propelled grenade launcher suffered a catastrophic failure when he fired it last month, shattering his cheekbone, fracturing his skull and leaving him with severe burns.
“Holy s***!, I can't even see my helmet leaving the frame,” he said as he watched the slowed-down footage yesterday.
“It's no wonder all the doctors told me I should have died.”
Adam Knowles has over 400,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel Ballistic High Speed, where he demonstrates the power of modern weapons
Everything seems to be going smoothly as Knowles prepares to demonstrate the impact of an RPG recoil on a ballistic dummy placed directly behind him.
But as he fired the RPG-7, high-speed footage captured the moment the impact hit him, sending smoke and flames billowing from the gun's barrel.
A split second later, Adam was consumed by a white hot fireball that blew off his helmet and nearly killed him
The final scene of that day's shooting, intended to demonstrate the danger to everyone in the area when a grenade launcher is fired.
The crew had placed a ballistic dummy directly behind Knowles to demonstrate the impact of the RPG-7's fiery recoil.
Their previous test had shown the dummy's arm being blown off its body and halfway across a field, and now they wanted to show what would happen to its head.
But slow motion footage shows smoke billowing from the device's stock as the grenade is fired before the weapon itself explodes, engulfing Knowles himself in a white-hot fire.
His helmet and safety visor were blown off and his ballistic vest dangled from his body as he was thrown unconscious to the ground with the camera still running.
His colleagues immediately come into view as someone shouts “Call 911” as Knowles tries to regain consciousness and wants to know who was injured.
He was airlifted to the hospital, where he received multiple skin grafts for his badly burned arms, shrapnel was removed and a $300,000 bill was paid.
He also suffered a dislocated jaw, traumatic brain injury and a brain haemorrhage.'
“There is still a lot of wound care needed, I haven't figured that out yet,” he told viewers when he returned to the channel.
“The nerve thing, you never know.”
He said he has “no memory of the incident after the countdown” and was trying to analyze what went 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 the area surrounding the weld is slightly more brittle, so there is a small inherent risk.
Adam staggers from the explosion as the smoke clears and he falls to the ground unconscious
Crew members attempt to treat his wounds as an air ambulance is called to airlift him out
He received multiple skin grafts for his badly burned arms, had shrapnel removed and was treated for traumatic brain injuries, a shattered cheekbone and a dislocated jaw.
Knowles returned to the channel for the first time yesterday to watch footage of the moment that almost cost him his life
He fears that an inherent weakness in the reactivated RPG may have caused the explosion
“The rocket launcher actually exploded.”
He said he still has “a few solid months” of rehabilitation ahead of him but is feeling “a lot better,” and vowed to return to his YouTube channel, which has attracted more than 400,000 subscribers with videos filmed with up to 250,000 frames per second.
“This won't stop me, we're back at it,” he added.
“I'm still limping a little, but we're not done yet.”