What is the funniest/ Dumbest thing you saw or heard while in the service?

[Scott C.]

I attended USAF Undergraduate Pilot Training as a new second lieutenant at Williams AFB, AZ (now Chandler Municipal Airport). On the day of my first solo flight in the T-37 (just me without an instructor pilot) I thought I was seriously hot stuff.

 

After a prebrief with my instructor in the squadron ready room, I sauntered down to the ops desk to check weather and NOTAMS and proudly sign my name to the flight log. Then it was across to the street to the parachute shop to preflight my oxygen mask and chute pack. Now with helmet bag in hand and parachute thrown jauntily over my shoulder, I strolled down the path to the flightline bench to await the next crew bus to take me to my jet – just one of many mighty twin-engine Tweets spread across the ramp in neat rows.

 

As I sat, I reviewed the flight profile in my head: climb out to the low practice area, perform a series of acrobatic maneuvers, then return to the pattern for some touch and goes. No sweat. It was a beautiful, cloudless day and nothing was going to stop me from strapping on my jet and have it do my bidding; I was in command – just me, the jet, and mother nature. I was hot stuff.

 

The crew bus arrived about five minutes later and I climbed in. The Airman 1st Class driver glanced at me in his rear-view mirror: “Where to, Lieutenant?”

 

“Charlie one!” I proudly announced, the parking spot of my aircraft.

 

The Airman paused, then craned his neck around to stare at me.

 

I quickly glanced at the ballpoint pen mark I’d scribbled on my hand at the ops desk: C1. “Yep, charlie one,” I said again.

 

“Okay, Charlie one . . .” the Airman repeated, rolling his eyes. He put the bus in gear, pulled a U-turn, stopped, and put the bus in Park again. “Charlie one,” the Airman announced with a chuckle.  I’d been so caught up in my self-righteous glory as an intrepid aviator, I had failed to realize my jet was parked right in front of me, just steps from the bench where I’d been waiting for the bus. It took the Airman 1st Class (who probably had more time in the Air Force than I did at that point) less than a minute to respectfully cut me down to size, and I sheepishly grabbed my helmet bag and parachute and thanked him as I slinked off the bus.

[one50]

My Stepdad was company commander at Fort Campbell in 1969.

His staff was drilling a group of new guys when they stopped for a break.

He walked into the latrine, which at the time had no doors on the stalls.

All the men in the latrines stood up to saluted him…pants at their ankles and all at attention.

He replied to them all “As you were” turned around and left the building only to double over in laughter outside with his Sergeants.

He loves to tell that story.

[Salvage Sailor]

58 minutes ago, Scott C. said:

I attended USAF Undergraduate Pilot Training as a new second lieutenant at Williams AFB, AZ (now Chandler Municipal Airport). On the day of my first solo flight in the T-37 (just me without an instructor pilot) I thought I was seriously hot stuff.

 

After a prebrief with my instructor in the squadron ready room, I sauntered down to the ops desk to check weather and NOTAMS and proudly sign my name to the flight log. Then it was across to the street to the parachute shop to preflight my oxygen mask and chute pack. Now with helmet bag in hand and parachute thrown jauntily over my shoulder, I strolled down the path to the flightline bench to await the next crew bus to take me to my jet – just one of many mighty twin-engine Tweets spread across the ramp in neat rows.

 

As I sat, I reviewed the flight profile in my head: climb out to the low practice area, perform a series of acrobatic maneuvers, then return to the pattern for some touch and goes. No sweat. It was a beautiful, cloudless day and nothing was going to stop me from strapping on my jet and have it do my bidding; I was in command – just me, the jet, and mother nature. I was hot stuff.

 

The crew bus arrived about five minutes later and I climbed in. The Airman 1st Class driver glanced at me in his rear-view mirror: “Where to, Lieutenant?”

 

“Charlie one!” I proudly announced, the parking spot of my aircraft.

 

The Airman paused, then craned his neck around to stare at me.

 

I quickly glanced at the ballpoint pen mark I’d scribbled on my hand at the ops desk: C1. “Yep, charlie one,” I said again.

 

“Okay, Charlie one . . .” the Airman repeated, rolling his eyes. He put the bus in gear, pulled a U-turn, stopped, and put the bus in Park again. “Charlie one,” the Airman announced with a chuckle.  I’d been so caught up in my self-righteous glory as an intrepid aviator, I had failed to realize my jet was parked right in front of me, just steps from the bench where I’d been waiting for the bus. It took the Airman 1st Class (who probably had more time in the Air Force than I did at that point) less than a minute to respectfully cut me down to size, and I sheepishly grabbed my helmet bag and parachute and thanked him as I slinked off the bus.

 

[S.ChrisKelly]

A look at "whatz happenin' now!"  Check out them genruls sa-lutin'!

 

Sources:

1.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3588300/amp/Air-Force-general-1st-woman-tier-US-combat-command.html

2.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2016/05/13/gen-lori-robinson-becomes-first-woman-to-lead-top-tier-u-s-combat-command/

 

 

 

[S.ChrisKelly]

[Reminder... Examples of proper saluting...]

Sources:

1.

https://www.grandforks.af.mil/News/Features/Display/Article/763995/warrior-of-the-week-senior-airman-syler-feldman/

2.

https://www.usafa.af.mil/News/Article/428548/cadet-candidates-recognized-for-academic-character-development/

3.

https://www.jbcharleston.jb.mil/News/Article/236232/wake-up-to-new-reveille-guidlines/

 

[S.ChrisKelly]

 

[And a few more!]

 

[S.ChrisKelly]

Now, DIS is a prop-ger SKALOOTE!

Ugh-gug-gug-gug-gug-gug!

 

 

[BeansEnHay]

When I was undergoing Basic Training at Ft. Leonard Wood, there was a guy in my company named, … let’s call him Fenwick. He seemed a good guy. If I remember right, he was an Army brat from the mid South.
There were several company’s of recruits in our training  area who marched with drummers at the back of the columns keeping cadence while their Drill Sergeants marched along. All of this was good, and sort of added to the martial atmosphere of the Post, but if my company was in formation and they were within earshot (they always were), old Fenwick would break formation and start dancing, yes, dancing.

You can imagine the upset our Drill Sergeants underwent each time this happened, and it happened enough because no amount of correction deterred Fenwick. About a month into our training I suddenly realized he was no longer with us, and I heard he had been chaptered out of the Army. 
To this day, when I hear a marching band, at times, It reminds me of Fenwick and his unfortunate compulsion.

Rob😀

[River Rat 1]

Well, when we got new recruits on ship a lot of jokes were done on them here are a few, They would give them the mail buoy watch we would set up a watch bill and give them a pair of binoculars and say look for this buoy it's how we get out mail at sea, another we need 100 feet of chow line, another we need relative bearing grease, and they fall for it there looking all over the ship for it. Another one when they allowed smoking anywhere on the ship new guys who never been on a ship would get seasick really easy, they would be on watch on the bridge this one chief would smoke cigars he would see them getting green and blow cigar smoke their way to get them greener. Lucky for me I never got seasick guess I had what we call sea legs.

[Brig]

28 minutes ago, BeansEnHay said:

When I was undergoing Basic Training at Ft. Leonard Wood, there was a guy in my company named, … let’s call him Fenwick. He seemed a good guy. If I remember right, he was an Army brat from the mid South.
There were several company’s of recruits in our training  area who marched with drummers at the back of the columns keeping cadence while their Drill Sergeants marched along. All of this was good, and sort of added to the martial atmosphere of the Post, but if my company was in formation and they were within earshot (they always were), old Fenwick would break formation and start dancing, yes, dancing.

You can imagine the upset our Drill Sergeants underwent each time this happened, and it happened enough because no amount of correction deterred Fenwick. About a month into our training I suddenly realized he was no longer with us, and I heard he had been chaptered out of the Army. 
To this day, when I hear a marching band, at times, It reminds me of Fenwick and his unfortunate compulsion.

Rob😀

 

Sounds like Fenwick got exactly what he wanted.

 

There's an old urban legend in the Marine Corps that may or may not be grounded in truth (I haven't run it to ground). Allegedly, at one point a young Marine began dribbling an invisible basketball all day, every day. He'd do it in formation, during PT, during inspection, standing in line at the chow hall...just non-stop. This went on for a period and the command sent him to see the Wizard. After several sessions and medical appointments, they finally decided to discharge him for psychological reasons. As the story goes, the day he was discharged, he picked up his papers and dribbled his imaginary ball to the command deck, stood in front of the CO and stopped, bent down and picked up the imaginary ball, placed it on the CO's desk and said, "game over, sir".

[BeansEnHay]

Legend or not, That’s a beautiful ending.

[S.ChrisKelly]

What I remember from the USAF...

1.  Go get me fifty feet of flight line.

2.  Take a trash bag and go collect an air sample.

3.  Find me a left-handed [anything].

4.  Skip shoot it.

5.  Fly helicopters.  Don't be a plane pilot.

6.  We're gonna have a locker-box inspection.

7.  This is a restricted area.  Are you restricted?

 

 

[Brig]

8 minutes ago, S.ChrisKelly said:

What I remember from the USAF...

1.  Go get me fifty feet of flight line.

2.  Take a trash bag and go collect an air sample.

3.  Find me a left-handed [anything].

4.  Skip shoot it.

5.  Fly helicopters.  Don't be a plane pilot.

6.  We're gonna have a locker-box inspection.

7.  This is a restricted area.  Are you restricted?

 

 

 

I've seen #2, but for a HMMWV exhaust sample

 

Also...

 

1. Find me some chem light batteries (until they actually came out with battery-powered "chem lights")

2. Find me a box of grid squares

3. Go get the keys to the HMMWV

4. Go ask 1stSgt for your ID-Ten-Tango form (IDIOT)

5. Go ask Gunny for a PRC-E7

[Scott C.]

Yep, the 'air sample' trick was an old standard for green aircrew members too.

 

In the C-130, there was another trick played on green copilots and navigators: before taking off on a mission, the crew would gather at the nose gear strut and divide the center cap of the front landing gear hub into five wedges with a grease marker, and each wedge would have a crew position properly designated on it: P (pilot), C (copilot), N (navigator), F (flight engineer), and L (loadmaster). When the mission was finished, whichever crew position wedge was at the top of the nose wheel cap had to buy the first round of beer in the squadron ready room.

 

Of course, unbeknownst to new copilots & navs, the cap of the nose gear hub could be rotated by hand, and the first person out of the plane upon engine shutdown was the loadmaster, who would turn the nose wheel cap to whomever the trick was to be played on before opening the crew entry door. 

[268th C.A.]

Scott C, Thats hilarious! Great one.... 

[Neil Albaugh]

On 8/24/2022 at 7:30 PM, AASLT said:

..that one time in Bamberg Germany when  we left for training (Graffenwoher?) in two separate convoys.

 

Our convoy arrives and would love to start getting set up, but the other convoy led by the 16th Sustainment Brigade, HHC First Sergeant is not here with the keys and other necessary equipment.

 

We waited and waited.. Comms are lost

Several hours later we find out our First Sergeant accidentally led a U.S. Army convoy, already in a foreign host nation,  through a different foreign country nearly causing an international news incident. 🤪

A similar thing happened when I was in Germany ('61 to '63) in a Corporal missile battalion. Some dumb LT couldn't read a map and almost led a whole US convoy into Czechoslovakia.

[S.ChrisKelly]

This story sounds familiar...

 

https://youtu.be/sKHwEoCIYqA?feature=shared

[Neil Albaugh]

It was Armed Forces Day in Huntsville, AL in 1960. A few friends and I were off duty from the Ordnance Guided Missile School (OGMS) at Redstone Arsenal and we were standing on the sidewalk downtown waiting for the parade to start. There was a big crowd lining the sidewalks and the parade finally got underway with an honor guard bearing the colors leading the way. One by one, each service marched by represented by a good-sized unit.

 

Next a unit of the us Navy Reserve came by, resplendent  in their dress whites. Some old Army NCO among the onlookers (who probably had a few beers) peered at these Navy Reservists going by in the parade and yelled out "Well, I'll be God dammed- they finally got those cooks to march!"

[Neil Albaugh]

In Germany in the early Sixties we spent quite a bit of time in the field on alerts. A call would come in to HQ announcing an alert and once authenticated we would all draw our, ammo, gas masks, and M-14s from the arms room and hook up trailers, generators, start all vehicles and head out of our kaserne in Babenhausen to our assembly area in the woods. It was usually in a little area we called Wasserlos where we waited for orders to proceed to another specified location. There, we would set up our equipment and run through a mock firing of a missile.

 

We had a basic load of Corporal Type IIB guided missiles and our fire mission was primarily to defend the Fulda Gap- the most probable invasion route of Soviet and Warsaw Pact armor into Western Europe. Once a missile had been "launched" and guided to its target and a final range correction and warhead arming signal was transmitted, we scrambled to a secondary site and repeated this drill. After we had fired all of our missiles, we were not needed as electronics technicians so we simply became riflemen.

 

With our re-designation as riflemen, I decided I might be somewhat better armed than carrying only an M-14, so I also carried a Walther PP pistol in a shoulder holster and strapped my Randall Model 1 fighting knife to the outside of my right thigh. This was a "gray area" as far as being authorized as far as I knew but I had no problem until the time we returned to our kaserne from an alert and I was walking back to our unit. I was accosted my a very short MP who demanded to see my knife. After inspecting it, he announced "This blade is over 4 inches long so it is illegal!" Actually, it was an 8 inch blade, so sharp that I could shave with it. He looked up at me and smugly said that I was under arrest and I would be taken to the kaserne MP station. I offered no objection and we walked over to it and to a desk with an older MP senior NCO. The MP and I stood in front of the desk while the MP droned on and on about all my violations and his own vigilance for the law, etc. One would think he had captured John Dillinger the way he went on and on.

 

Finally the old Sergeant looked at me, squinted his eyes and hissed "Get outta here!" The little MP was crestfallen; his career-making arrestee walked out and back to his unit, still carrying his M-14 rifle, his Walther PP, his Randall fighting knife, and a couple of grenades.

[Neil Albaugh]

Maybe this story is marginal for this forum but...

 

My first wife, Ella, after graduating high school, visited every branch of service recruiting office in her little town of Owosso, MI. She and her friend decided the Navy had the most attractive uniforms so they both enlisted in the US Navy. After boot camp at Great Lakes Training Center, she was posted to the Bureau of Yards & Docks, near Ft Meyer just outside Washington, DC.

 

While in the Ft Meyer snack bar for lunch, she and her friend sat at a small table. After a while, a young soldier carrying a tray approached and asked if he could share their table. Ella, having a quick wit and a cynical sense of humor, looked this fellow up and down, noticed his chest full of ribbons and decorations. "Well", she snapped "It looks like someone has been shopping at the PX!"  Long story short- this was Guy Howard and he had earned every one of those medals-  a Purple Heart with seven oak leaf clusters, a Silver Star, a Soldier's Medal and a Bronze Star with an oak leaf cluster.  Believe it or not they ended up getting married!

 

Guy's obituary was even published in the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1981/04/04/guy-howard-first-sergeant-had-purple-heart-7-clusters/7bdd50c6-fc4f-4594-affe-928772450c1f/

 

I knew Guy Howard after he had retired and remarried; he was a unique man. In Korea he was with the Army Regimental Combat Team on the north side of the Chosin Reservoir and his career spanned many assignments, including a stint at the Language School in Monterrey, CA where he learned Serbo- Croatian. In Beirut he was an Embassy Military Attache and knew Kim Philby. An altogether fascinating man.

 

 

[S.ChrisKelly]

That's what I'm talkin' about!  Cold War Victory!

 

Military intellence information follows! Eyes only [especially since they're just pictures!]!!!

 

1., 2. & 3. The audience!

4., 5., 6. & 7. The enemy! Front and back!

 

 

[General Apathy]

On 1/7/2020 at 4:20 AM, zzyzzogeton said:

Funny only in an exasperating way.

 

I was a LTjg about to make LT on an aircraft carrier. When our ship pulled in to San Diego, the ship was assigned X # of trucks for supply runs. The Engineering Department was assigned a "3 on the tree" Dodge pickup. I was sitting at my desk writing Evals when the 1MC blared -

 

.

Hi zzyzzogeton,

 

neat story I enjoyed especially the ' 3 on the tree ' comment which reminded me of a similar story regarding ' 3 on the floor '

 

Not really a story of life in the military but the story of a long-time friend who collects WWII US military vehicles.  The friend left his vehicle barn the one lunchtime and walked around the roadside of another barn on the way to his house for lunch.  Out on the road he encountered the rear of the postman studying something held in his hand.  He came alongside the postman and said ' good morning ' causing the postman to jump,  the postman had opened one of my friends brown envelopes marked ' 3 on the floor magazine ' and stutteringly offered an apology saying that he thought it contained a porn magazine.  In the 1970's my friend belonged to a UK club for vintage US vehicles entitled ' 3 on the floor '. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  

 

regards lewis

 

...

[S.ChrisKelly]

Remember Post #80, on page 4, from 23 April 2023?  I mentioned my father.  He was posted to Augsburg, Germany, 1961 - 1963, as an air traffic controller with the 24th Aviation Battalion.  

 

Just for reference, these images are included:

 

1. 24th Avn Bn DI.

2. Basic training with the 17th FA Btn, Fort Benning, Georgia, 1960.

3. On leave in Oberammergau, Germany, sometime 1962 - 1963.  The look on his face says it all.

[S.ChrisKelly]

Wow.  Mind - shattering.

Read the listing in "Source", then refer to post #88 in this topic.

You'll understand.

 

Source:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325679913101

[The Rooster]

"It takes all kinds"

 

 

Before I tell this brief story I want to say I served for 16 active guard 2 inactive. years in the guard and reserve and was never deployed,

so all of what I can relate is incidents during training because thats all I did in there.

Like being third string on the football team and never getting in the game.

My hats always off to the combat Vets.

And people who fly and all sailors and every

single person that serves or has or will serve no matter their MOS.

 

 

 

..... One Saturday night in the training area about 10 O clock in a rain storm, the squad I was in

was picked to patrol led by our platoons new 2nd lieutenant. To make a long story short, he got us completely lost. We crossed and re crossed the same creek

Seemed like we were going in cirles until about 3AM, this Private and myself.... another private recognized where we were and led the squad back to the company perimeter. All in a non stop downpour. We nicknamed the Platoon leader.... "Wrong Way".. we called him wrong way although not to his face of course.

The ironic part is, that I know for a fact that he transferred to the regular army and became a helicopter pilot.

He could fly a helicopter but on the ground with a compass leading the way???

Look out !

😁