Navy communications technician Zachary Yarwood died in North Shore Hospital in March following an incident during a dive training exercise. Photo / supplied
Navy communications technician Zachary Yarwood died in North Shore Hospital in March following an incident during a dive training exercise. Photo / supplied
At least 13 military men have been killed or fatally injured in New Zealand military training exercises in this country or overseas since 1990:
• March 2019 - Royal New Zealand Navy sailor Zachary Yarwood, 23, died in North Shore Hospital on March 26 this year following an incident duringdive training the previous night at the Devonport Naval Base. Yarwood was involved in advanced diver training in 6-8m of water when the incident happened.
• January 2019 - Corporal Aloysius Pang, also known as Pang Wei Chong, of Singapore, was fatally injured during a live-firing training exercise at Waiouru military camp. An actor in civilian life, the 28-year-old was on compulsory military service for Singapore. He was injured while carrying out repairs inside a self-propelled Howitzer and died later in Waikato Hospital following surgeries.
Aloysius Pang, a member of the Singapore military, was fatally injured during a training exercise at Waiouru military camp in January this year. Photo / Instagram
• October 2017 - Sergeant Wayne Taylor, 42, of the New Zealand Special Operations Force, died while on counter-terrorism training off the Coromandel Peninsula. He was knocked unconscious in a fall from a ladder on a boat and ended up in the sea, where he drowned. A married father of four children, he had served in East Timor and Afghanistan.
Sergeant Wayne Taylor died training off the Coromandel Peninsula in October 2017. Photo / supplied
• September 2012 - Rifleman Michael Ross, of the Royal New Zealand Engineers, drowned in Lake Moawhango, near Waiouru. When the 29-year-old fell out of an under-inflated Zodiac boat, his lifejacket failed to inflate because a gas canister had not been replaced. An army sergeant was later found guilty on a charge of failing to comply with written orders.
Rifleman Michael Ross drowned in a lake near Waiouru in 2012.
• November 2009 - Flight Sergeant Andrew Forster was killed by the explosion of a 105mm artillery shell. The 46-year-old bomb-disposal expert and married father of three children was marking munitions in a training area for disposal at the Waiouru military base when the explosion occurred. His death was the first serious accident during training at the Waiouru base since 1997.
Flight Sergeant Andrew Forster was killed by the explosion of an artillery shell at Waiouru military camp in 2009.
• March 2001 - Special Air Service Acting Major John McNutt, 27, was accidentally killed during a training exercise in Kuwait. He was observing a live-firing training exercise when the observation post he was in was hit by a mis-directed bomb launched from a United States warplane involved in the exercise.
Major John McNutt was killed accidentally in Kuwait 2001 during a training exercise.
• June 1995 - Lance-Corporal Dan Flanagan died in Zimbabwe. The official version of his demise was that he was killed by stampeding elephants, but his widow believed he was shot on an operation with British forces.
Able Rating Jeffrey Boult was one of six men to die during a military alpine training exercise on Mt Ruapehu in August 1990.
• August 1990 - Six military men died in a storm during an army alpine training exercise near the summit plateau of Mt Ruapehu. They were Private Brett Barker, 18; Able Rating Jeffrey Boult, 22; Private Mark Madigan, 20; Private Stuart McAlpine, 23; Private Jason Menhennet, 19; and Private David Stewart, 23.
