A unit of the Romanian Armed Forces suffered an embarrassing equipment failure at an exercise in Germany, Hungarian-language Romanian news portal Főtér reports.
According to the article, the 812th Infantry Battalion based in Bistrita, Eastern Romania, nicknamed the “Carpathian Falcons,” was attending a military exercise with units of other NATO countries in Brandenburg, Germany.
As part of the exercise, the infantry moved from Klietz to the Lehn exercise ground area in armored vehicles. The Romanian unit, which consisted of 12 amphibious armed personnel carriers (APCs) was on its way to Lehn when the accident occurred.
According to reports, the APCs spilled oil and diesel all over the asphalt. By the time the problem was noticed, the road was already covered with oil and diesel for about ten kilometers – which, of course, was even more spread out by those who came after them.
The road authorities then had to deploy their special vehicles to clean the roadway, which was quite difficult due to the oil that was soaked directly into the asphalt.
The vehicles were subsequently sent back to Romania on trailers. The Romanian Defense Ministry, however, explained in a statement that the APCs did not leak oil – according to them, falling rain washed oil from the vehicles onto the road.
The vast majority of the Romanian Armed Forces’ APC are Soviet-designed BTRs manufactured under license in Romania from the 1970s.
