I was the Plane Captain for an Alert 7 F/A-18, Alert 5's are manned and on the cats and Alert 7's are manned but parked in a out of the way but ready to go spot(at least their supposed to be). Anyway mine was parked in the 'six pack', ass up against the Island. We were off the coast of Florida and in mock combat with the Air Force when the air boss yells "launch the Alert 5's, standby Alert 7's". The pilot gives me the go signal and without thinking anymore than he did we started firing her up, we were well into starting engine #2 when I noticed the burning paint flyin off the side of Island. It was at that time the Yellow Shirts ran over freakin out, with good reason since a load of F.O.D. was headed for the stern where there were more jet engines turnin, and we shut everything down. Half of the 9 of the #59 was burned up along with the lights that illuminate it. Needless to say I felt real stupid and a little while later I was standing in front of Capt. Bob Cole and it went something like this "@#^%&*(@#$%you little sonnuva&)$#@!^%*what were you thinkin%*(#@@%^&*$#burn the paint offa my&^%%$#$*ship#$%^&*^%$get the hell outta here$%&&#$#%&*where do you think your goin*&^$@#@$^&*get back here i'm not finished&*%$#@^%^*#$&%@airwingers!"
Almost had my qualifications pulled, the only thing that saved me was the pilot went to bat for me which was really something since he got the same ass chewin I did and the fact that they couldn't satisfactorily explain to my C.O. how they expected to hook up and tow the bird out of that spot and launch it in 7 minutes. No excuse I guess I was just so caught up in the moment that all I could think of was gettin that bird in the air and didn't give a thought to the jet blast. It was horrible and was the standing joke for the rest of the workup AND the cruise that followed.

  While stationed in Italy as an MP, I was patrolling around our Depot in my reliant K-car. well this Depot had a railroad in it, and a switcher engine.

 The switcher had it's own garage. In the front of this garage there was a ramp that went over the railroad track. I thought the ramp went down the other side also...

  So I idle up the ramp only to have the front wheels of my K car drop off the other side. Now I am stuck, front wheels spinning in air, but as get out of the car, I notice that the car is well balanced, and I am able to pick up the back of the car.

  So I leave the car in drive, pick up the rear bumper and the front wheels hit the ground, I am left slackjawed and helpless as my K car goes rumbling off, driverless and on its own, to hit what ever it pleases.

  Thank god PT was mandatory and gave me the speed to catch that K car and get it stopped. No damage and and no witness to my stupidity.

   

LMAO! gt6plus looks like your the lucky one with no witnesses. Paul did you get an ass chewin and are we three the only ones willin to fess up? It doesn't need to be hugely idiotic people lets here em.

The A-3 has a drag chute located in the back of it to slow it down once it landed on the deck.
[img]http://www.vaq34.com/vaq34/kirtA3_212.jpg[/img]
I was an e-2, just qualified as a plane captain on the A-3. It was our job to repack and install the drag chute after each flight.
Most of the time the Enlisted Crewchief would either do the postflight inspection or he would fuel and pack/install the chute. In the squadron there was a primadonna Crewchief who would never help out the line crew. One time after we had been working for 16 hours the plane he was on came in. He was told to ensure that the plane be ready to launch in an hour. Instead of him helping us he took off. That was it for us. I went back to the barracks and got the unclaimed laundry out of the MAA office.  We took all the underwear and went back to the squadron. We then took an old drag chute and tied about 70 items of underwear to the risers and suspension lines of the chute. We packed it up and installed it on the plane. The crew walked and launched.  About 3 hours later the maintenance officer got a call from the crew.  It seems that when they had landed at the airfield and deployed the chute most of the underwear had ripped off of the chute. it littered the runway (FOD'ed). And since we used an old chute it blew out about 2 seconds after touchdown.
We got in more trouble for FODding out the runway more than anything else. When the Crewchief came back to yell at us out supervisor (who was also a Crewchief) told him to pack sand, that he should have inspected the chute as it was being packed or done it himself.

Thanks to an inattentive co-driver, I once backed over a freshly restored 1965 Mustang with an M978 HEMTT fuel tanker while parallel parking it.

[img]http://www.jed.simonides.org/transport/mike-numbers/hemtt_series/m978/m978_003.jpg[/img]

Poor guy had just got it out the paint shop and hadn't even put the windshield wipers back on yet. I'm quite sure he was handsomely compensated by Uncle Sam, however...

Well this was one of many stupid pranks I was involved in while in the Airforce. This one happened while in Tech school, while stationed at Chanute AFB, in Rantoul, Illinios.

Myself and 3 others were walking back to our dorm after a night on the town in Rantoul. I had just gotten a new roomate fresh from basic training. It was about 3 in the morning. While walking back we came up with this prank to pull on this guy, I cant remember his first name but his last name was Mcgovern, little twit got my ass in alot of trouble, could not take a joke.

Anyway we decided to jack him up and play head games with him. So what we decided to do was take some medication that one of my friends had and put it in some plastic bags, make the medication look like cocaine and I would place it in his wall locker that he had open because he was still putting all his stuff away.Then What I would do is come back in the room and go to bed. Then what my friends would do is come back to the room in about an hour, knock on the door dressed as Security police officers,storm into the room and jack the both of us up, and detain us. Then request that we allow them to search our wall lockers for drugs because I was spotted running from the main gate into the base and wanted for questioning for drug possesion. So while the two of my friends were yelling at this guy they had him standing at attention and were just tossing everything out of his locker, then they happened onto the drugs, well then all hell broke loose. This guy was scared so bad I think he crapped his pants, anyway my two friends requested he sign a piece of paper saying that they had searched his locker with his permision, he never read what he signed he just signed it, well the piece of paper was an Air force form:341, and on the back they had wrote, "Welcome to Chanute AFB, AB Mcgovern! So then they said, dont you ever read what you sign, he then looked at the paper, and then he started laughing. We all thought he was cool with this, but evedentially not, he went to the First Sergent, and the Comander, and all four of us got into some pretty deep trouble. I thought at the time I was going to get kicked out. I ended up getting a letter of reprimand, and confined to base for 3 weeks. Some people just cant take a joke.

Probably was not the smartest thing I ever done, but at the time it sure was funny.

After a very long and hard day, on a very cold and wet night, I was taking the truck with all of the "B" bags (which had personal gear and sleeping bags) and cots to the designated sleep area for the TOC we had just set up in the woods in Germany. I was temporarily assigned to the Division headquarters and didn't know anyone except for one WO who got sent up with me, and we didn't really like the HQ pukes.

I took a wrong turn and wound up on a logging road. While not quite lost, there was no place to turn around; it was a really narrow road. Eventually, after several miles, there was a very small gap, which we attempted to turn around on. Of course, I high-centered the truck on a tree stump so badly that only one tire could touch the ground. With all of the mud, we were unable to successfully self-recover.

Everyone in my unit was waiting for their sleeping gear so the folks who weren't on the night shift in the TOC could catch a few hours of sleep before the sun came up and they were back on watch. It took me a couple of hours to make my way back to the TOC cross country.

Then, to make matters worse, when I finally find the recovery crew, the wrecker driver takes off like a bat out of hell from his parking spot, bottoming out in a ditch and wrecking the 5-ton wrecker, setting it on fire. I also knocked out the windshield on my side of the wrecker when my helmet impacted it. The Division CSM even made it over, because he saw the wreck and saw the huge blue sparks as the damaged batteries on the wrecker arced out. Luckily I was able to dodge his wrath by the simple expedient of ducking into the darkness.

We wound up having to carry the bags out by hand and it was a couple of days before they got the truck recovered. No one got any sleep that night, they all blamed me, and I didn't get sleep for the next several days because of attempts a retribution from the staff pukes. I also got nearly electrocuted a couple of days later because I drew a lot of single-man sh-t details after this incident, and the staff pukes apparently never learned how to properly to ground a shelter, but that is another story.

Some where in Southern Bavaria my arty unit was play Army for a ARTEP or something.  We were doing a night survey to bring azimuth and coordinates to a battery of 177mm Howz.  Our survey party, of about 7 was in this range area that was (I thought) secure.  So here we are, out in the middle of this field under black out rules.  Not too far away the unmistakable sound of a herd of M-60 tanks is detected.  

They get closer.

They're all around us, going to beet the band with no lights on either.  This was before the days of night vision.

Our sergeant yells "Run for the trucks!".

There I am on top of my jeep with my little Army issued flash light, waving it around, hoping I don't become toe jam in an M-60 tank tread.

I felt really, really stupid.

Another time at Graph on range police duty I ran across a case of artillery simulators that didn't make it into the dumper.  Later that night we recover the case and after a couple of Zerndorf's finest, we placed 2 of them up against the CO's tent.  After stringing 2 miles of commo wire connected to the tops of the simulators to a remote outlet we stripped the ends and heated them up.

[size=5][b]WHOOM![/b][size=5]

Actually that was not that stupid.  It was funny as hell and we didn't get caught and no one got hurt.  Our CO was drunk at the time and I guess we induced a puking jag.

USN-Joe

Is the A3 you picture from VAQ-135?

I packed alot of drag chutes back in the early 70's. One of the crew chiefs told a story about someone stuffing the chute compartment with bags of garbage.  Might have been wishful thinking.

During NATO ops in the Med we had a couple of British F4's land on the Forrestal.  Went to the observation deck, 06 or 07 deck I beleive to watch'em off the forward cats.  The British F4 have Rolls Royce Spey type engines which were more powerful than the ones in the US version.  Then, they raised the JBD, the F4 hit it's afterburner, red hot liquid nonskid from the JBD was hitting the front of the island like shrapnel.  That's where the observation area was.  Talk about leaving the area in a hurry.  No injuries to speak of.

Bulkhead

if anyone knows what a GTC-85 Jet Starting Pod is, here's my story, those babies only have three wheels, two rear one front, the tow handle is also the brake, they have a small jet engine in them.........

one night at Patuxent River NATC, back in 1957ad a buddy of mine & i decided to race them, we started them, sat on the front & pushed the handle down wyth our feet to start moving, we raced out on a taxiway then onto the duty runway, which at the tyme we did not know that, we were going about 40mph down the center line when a friggen airplane was coming in for a landing, my buddy took the left side & i took the right side of the runway, the plane passed between us & we quickly found a taxiway & made it back to our hanger, we did not get caught, but there was some hell raised.........

i also knocked one of the hangar doors off the track by moving it too fast......

How about [b]RE[/b]-enlisting?
[i]Aieeeeee![/i]