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Burying the evidence


RTFREY
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I served in the USAF from 1955 t0 1967 as a Weapons and Munitions specialist.

 

Many years ago in a far away place the boss said I need someone to order more cleaning solvent for rocket tubes, so I said I can do that.

 

We never used a lot of it as it was fairly strong stuff and a little went a long way.

 

It came in a 55 gallon steel barrel so I took down the stock number and headed for supply. I got a requistion form and filled it out like I knew what I was doing.

 

Some time much latter a driver came in the shop and said to me "your solvents here where do you want it". "Over in the corner" I said pointing to the other barrel. He laughed and said "Hey it ain't gona fit there. What do mean" I replied and he said "come and look". Out on his truck were 55 DRUMS of solvent!!. I said "I didn't order that, yes you did here's the requistion".

 

Here's where DUMMY woke up! I filled the order out with the unit of issue as 55 GALLONS, which was wrong, the unit of issue was DRUMS so the sent 55 DRUMS and I had a SIX BY truck full. "TAKE IT BACK and leave one" I pleaded to which he said "WE DON"T DO THAT, WE ONLY ISSUE STUFF!!." I had the same luck with the supply Sgt.

 

I was now in deep POOP because we weren't authorized that much, wouldn't use it in 10 years and that much was a fire hazard as I had it hidden in the corner of the hanger with a tarp over it!

 

I finally contacted a buddy in the Civil Engineers and they took it somewhere on the corner of the field, dug a BIG HOLE with a bulldozer and buried it.

 

It cost me FOUR CASES of beer but saved my stripes.

 

As the Pennsylvanis Dutch say "WE GET TO SOON OLD AND TO LATE SMART"

regards,

Bob Frey

 

ps Next war story, if anyone is interested I tell you how I sank a Korean Ferry all by myself without firing a shot!

regards,

Bob Frey

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teufelhunde.ret
ps Next war story, if anyone is interested I tell you how I sank a Korean Ferry all by myself without firing a shot!

regards,

Bob Frey

 

Sadly, I think allot of us made these same dumb rump mistakes :blink: OK, lets hear about the Ferry....

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I served in the USAF from 1955 t0 1967 as a Weapons and Munitions specialist.

 

Many years ago in a far away place the boss said I need someone to order more cleaning solvent for rocket tubes, so I said I can do that...

 

I served in the USAF from 1986 to 2008, 12 of those years in far-away places. On several occasions, I was tangentially involved in environmental clean up activities which today are mandated by Federal guidelines and various SOFA agreements.

 

The cost of those activities today reaches into the hundreds of Millions of dollars for DoD as it is responsible to abate any hazardous materials before government facilities are turned back over to local governments.

 

In some occasions, carcinogenic chemicals have leached into local water tables, as steel drums rust--losing their integrity, poisoning crops and causing rates of various cancers and birth defects to rise far above normal levels.

 

When previously unknown caches of hazardous materials are found, the US government is liable even years after the fact a few years ago, a WW1 chemical weapons cache was found in the back yard of the South Korean Ambassador's residence in Washington! The environmental "Superfund" pays for clean-ups in those instances.

 

All of the above costs the US taxpayers Billions (yes with a B ).

 

This is not meant to blame anybody, even as little as 25 years ago, the environmental impact of DoD's past activities was not even considered. Heck, the PREFERRED method of disposing most hazardous materials was burying it! Unfortunately, today we find ourselves in the business of cleaning up and abating everything from UXOs to excess chemicals.

 

Those may have been some of the most expensive cases of beer ever! w00t.gif

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I served in a dual role as both a maintenance and logistics officer in the US Army.

The military supply system is designed to allow a properly filled requistion flow through the supply chain as fast as possible so that needed items can get to the troops without delay.

 

There are checkpoints in the system, but there are just so many supply requests that it is hard to catch them all.

 

Here are a few notable ones....

 

A friend of mine was a supply warrant officer serving in Thailand. He was preparing for the rainy season and on behalf of the Special Forces, he was ordering ponchos for some local allied troops. He put in what he believed was the correct stocknumber and fired it away. About 10 days later he got a phone call asking him why he wanted 50 Frigidaire refrigerators delivered in the middle of a jungle? The requisition was cancelled.

 

Another friend of mine was a maintenance warrant officer in an Engineer Battalion, also in Thailand. I believe he was ordering a generator, or something of equal bulk. When the phone rang for him the question was where did he want his fully fueled F-4 Phantom to be delivered? The requisition was cancelled.

 

Then there was the disgruntled Army supply clerk serving at Ft. Riley, Kansas. As we all know, this is about as close to being in the land locked center of the country as you can be. As he was being forcibly removed from the military, his post made the mistake of keeping him working at his job. About 2 weeks after he was escorted out the front gate with a dishonorable discharge, a supply train pulled onto post with a very special cargo. On top of a flat car were two gray US Navy battle ship anchors. These were dutifully unloaded by the post transportation personnel and the train departed. The post commander had a kitten when asked where these were to be placed and ordered them to be returned. When the cost of shipping them all the way back to a naval depot on the coast was calculated, it was outside the annual budget for the post. I am told they were placed at the foot of a flag poll and kept there for years!

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I served in a dual role as both a maintenance and logistics officer in the US Army.

The military supply system is designed to allow a properly filled requistion flow through the supply chain as fast as possible so that needed items can get to the troops without delay.

 

There are checkpoints in the system, but there are just so many supply requests that it is hard to catch them all.

 

Here are a few notable ones....

 

A friend of mine was a supply warrant officer serving in Thailand. He was preparing for the rainy season and on behalf of the Special Forces, he was ordering ponchos for some local allied troops. He put in what he believed was the correct stocknumber and fired it away. About 10 days later he got a phone call asking him why he wanted 50 Frigidaire refrigerators delivered in the middle of a jungle? The requisition was cancelled.

 

Another friend of mine was a maintenance warrant officer in an Engineer Battalion, also in Thailand. I believe he was ordering a generator, or something of equal bulk. When the phone rang for him the question was where did he want his fully fueled F-4 Phantom to be delivered? The requisition was cancelled.

 

Then there was the disgruntled Army supply clerk serving at Ft. Riley, Kansas. As we all know, this is about as close to being in the land locked center of the country as you can be. As he was being forcibly removed from the military, his post made the mistake of keeping him working at his job. About 2 weeks after he was escorted out the front gate with a dishonorable discharge, a supply train pulled onto post with a very special cargo. On top of a flat car were two gray US Navy battle ship anchors. These were dutifully unloaded by the post transportation personnel and the train departed. The post commander had a kitten when asked where these were to be placed and ordered them to be returned. When the cost of shipping them all the way back to a naval depot on the coast was calculated, it was outside the annual budget for the post. I am told they were placed at the foot of a flag poll and kept there for years!

 

 

 

 

...and I have still been looking for the NSN for the battleship anchor. Anyone know what it is. I want to jokingly try to order one.

 

Mike

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While in VN, a prime trade item was the all-metal utility jackknife. They were in supposedly short supply and demand was high. Then when I was out scrounging for other things (like generator parts) I was given a nearly full, opened box of them by a USMC GySgt (Master Scrounger). This was like giving a waiter a $50 tip.

 

Why was he so generous? Well, somebody had ordered 100 of them and 100 boxes -- of 100 each -- arrived. The Gunny and the USMC units in general) was almost out the door to go home, so was giving them out as "favors".

 

I wound up using about 40 of knives to grease the skids for inheriting something like 20 unused, never opened 20kw diesel generators (USN property, in the tender care of the Gunny's USN counterpart down the road). There were other things involved in deal too -- Montagnard crossbows, tigerstripes, one SKS, one Tokarev....

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El Bibliotecario

*LOL* That unit of issue can be a bearcat

 

During my enlisted service, I was once given two TL29 knives by a fellow parts clerk from another battery--seems he had thought the unit of issue was EA when in fact it was GR (gross)

 

Read an anecote where an enginer officer cleared his unit by listing his most glaring shortage with stuff missing from the mess hall..."One boat, gravy; one boat, tug." If that story isn't true, it should be.

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Once upon a time in the NG, at summer camp, I discovered a pile of wooden-crated ammo in the bushes, maybe 35 yards removed from the vehicle washpoint. I had seen the rectalinear dark shape(s) sort of covered with half-dead brush. When I went over to investigate, I determined that the heap consisted of 18,000+ rds of linked M-60 mg ammo. I directed my driver to scare up a truck and a couple helpers to upload the stuff, ultimate destination TBD.

 

About two hours later, my driver showed up..."Hey, sir, sorry it took so long, but there was more stuff than we thought!" Like what? "Ohh, nine cases of .50, some belts of .50, 27 rds of 81mm HE, and a case of frags..."

 

It seems that the MG ammo was piled on top of the other stuff, which had been semi-buried.

 

The ammo did not fit anything drawn by our Bn (that is, camp cycle), and the dead foliage did not seem a whole week old, but we never figured it out.

 

BTW we already knew that the Ammo Supply Point would not accept a Found On Post turn-in of this stuff, so I THINK it just got buried BETTER, somewhere else, per arrangement with Bde HQ. last I knew it was transferred to the back of a dumptruck....

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Vietnamese_UH_1_pushed_over_board__Operation_Frequent_Wind.jpg

 

Okay, now. Let's explain that photo was taken during Operation Frequent Wind when about 7,000 people were evacuating from Saigon by helicopter in front of the Communist takeover. So many helicopters were flying out to fleet, that there was not enough space on the deck to continue landing them. So the decision was made to push them over the side so that more people could be taken on board. The situation was so bad that some helicopters actually landed in the water. The Huey was not made to land in the ocean, and there were some very dangerous situations with the rotors still turning when they hit the water.

 

If you want to talk about waste, read about when USN Aircraft Carriers were returning from the Pacific after the Japanese surrender. Entire squadrons of fighters, bombers and torpedo planes were pushed off the fantail until the ships returned home empty. The short sightedness of this became apparent during the Korean War. The USMC was so short of aircraft that they brought back shot up aircraft to stateside depots to be completely rebuilt. My Dad worked as a Marine Corps aircraft technician at one of the depots at Cherry Point, NC for the duration.

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I talked with a vet who was in the USN in the Aleutians during the Korean War, who related a tale of being at a remote base that had warehouses full of wartime stuff, including jeeps and Weasels. So many unauthorized jeeps were in use, with more continually finding their way out of deep storage into the brisk air, that it seemed every Quonset hut (small barracks) had at least one. Lacking locks, they were also fair game for midnight acquisition and broad daylight thieving. Collisons and injuries got out of hand, so the base CO had many of them confiscated by the Shore Patrol -- to be started, the steering wheel braced into straight-ahead position and driven off the proverbial long pier, into 40-60 feet of water. The vet estimated that 30 or so jeeps went to Davy's locker this way.

 

Weasels: "Fun buggies" for jaunts into the interior, for hunting or just sightseeing. When they broke down or threw a track, they were abandoned in place. The base also ran about 20 of them, for legit business.

 

He said that M1903 Springfields were plentiful and not much controlled -- but CPOs were expected to keep tabs on their use and take them away as needed, and AMMO was controlled.

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Laury Allison

Reminds me of the story my Dad told me about ordering 144 rolls of toilet paper and instead got 144 cases (at 144 rolls per case) of toilet paper. That is a LOT of toilet paper. That unit of issue will get you every time.

 

I think any of us that have been in the military and ordered anything through supply have had this stuff happen. I remember ordering medals one time and had a need for a few medals that weren't commonly used but came up now and then. I order something like 20 of the medal (I don't remember what it was)....turned out the stock number was some other medal and instead of the $2 or $3 each it should have been, it was for some kind of gold medal that was $400.00 each! 20 of those would have killed our annual budget....luckily somebody in supply caught the error and we cancelled that part of the order.

 

Laury

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I once knew a Civil War collector who had started ordering from Bannerman and Stokes Kirk in the mid-1950s. He saved his paper route earnings to place orders. He sent off for ONE (1) US oval belt buckle (yes, original -- probably $5 or so). And got back not 1@ buckle, but 1@CRATE of buckles. A crate of 100 pre-CW Mounted Rifle buckles (smaller, all brass with no lead filling on the back,as used on the MR white buff belt). The crate was stencilled IIRC 1858, St. Louis depot, and each buckle was wrapped in light red tissue paper. The wooden crate was in size about two shoeboxes big. When I saw it (1967?) it still had 60-70 buckles. The others he had traded off for other CW goodies and sold a few to buy a used car.....

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