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Posted: 8/11/2005 5:49:06 AM EDT
[#1]
Too many to remember. I saw astounding stupidity on a daily basis.
ETE here is one. We are doing an in flight rig on a C130. Some cherry 11C is rigging himself up and I notice he is not grimacing in pain liek the rest of us. I ask him what he is jumping. I look down and see he is jumping the basepplat for the mortar and his leg straps are loose. I told him to tighten them up and he said it wasnt comfortable. I told him that it wasnt supposd to be. He goes to the tail of the 130 gets JMPI and they yell at him and tighten the straps. He coms back witha frown like a little kid who got in trouble. AFter about another 2 hours of vomit inducing fight while sitting in the hell hole we wake up to "20 MINUTES" While we are hooking up and getting ready. I notice he is comfortable. I figure to tell him to tighten his crap again but he ignores me. I debated telling someone then the green light came on and it was all business. We emptied 130's real quick. I found him later sitting on his ruck with blood pouring from his face. Just like it was supposed to, the wind flipped his ruck right up into his face. Since he was jumping the baseplate which is strapped to the front of his ruck, it nailed him good. |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 5:56:06 AM EDT
[#2]
Holy shit! NO CAREER FOR YOU! I once saw some commo geeks leave two of their buddies in an ambush, ran back to base. |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 5:57:21 AM EDT
[#3]
strangest thing I ever saw was a monkey screw a chicken to death
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Posted: 8/11/2005 5:59:39 AM EDT
[#4]
Holy mackeral, I never saw anything like that on National Geographic.
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:01:19 AM EDT
[#5]
I was at a Stinger missile live fire range a few years ago, working BAT detail. A BAT is a Ballistic Aerial Target - basically an big red unguided rocket you shoot up in the air on a ballistic path, just to have a moving target for the missile to lock on to. At this range we had two Sentinel radars set up as a safety precaution, and of course had a no fly zone in effect in the area. After shooting 10-15 missiles, we have another live Stinger up on the range, waiting for the target BAT to launch, when suddenly the Range Controller starts screaming over the loudspeakers 'CEASE FIRE CEASE FIRE!! Set your missiles down!! Less than one minute later, two B-1 bombers come flying in low over the missile range, at less than 1000' AGL, in a straight line path, moving very slowly. I guess they were about to land. I could not believe that some air traffic controller cleared them to fly over a live anti-aircraft missile range on approach to the runway. I never heard the full story, but undoubtable someone lost thier job over that SNAFU. |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:10:31 AM EDT
[#6]
Another dumb one.
Was playing OPFOR on a range in Graf Germany. I think it was the squad live fire range. We were at the end of the range and I noticed all these little golden eggs. I realized they were 40mm rounds that didnt go off. Before I got to say anything, an E5 walks up with a K-Pot full of them. "Hey XXXX lets throw these and see if they go off"  Same range I was filling in for the AG of a gun team and I was running with the tripod and I raise it uip over my head to get the middle leg extended and was ready to slam it intot he dirt for the gunner. It was like slow motion. It was like watching myself getting ready to be blown into thousands of pieces. Ther ewas this DRAgon round laying there stuck in the dirt and grass. Had to be only a few weeks old. It still had some unburned motors and I realised that my tripod was going to be buried in it real deep. I tried in vain to stop it, I couldnt , I was able to miss it though. The gunner was complaiing because it was off to his left too far. I pointed to what his muzzle was resting on. The smell of poo swept over the range. That place has some serious issues with ordinance laying around. |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:15:34 AM EDT
[#7]
i saw a E6 with no military bearing at all. he had his hair fixed up like Gumby. what a loser!
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:21:13 AM EDT
[#8]
The weiredest thing I've seen happen to us was that all platoons in our tank company were issued a set of golf clubs while in Iraq.
I run into my PSG going the other way. "Why do you have what appears to be a golf bag over your shoulder?" "It -is- a golf bag, sir" "OK.. Why do you have a golf bag over your shoulder?" "Its our issued golf bag. Every platoon has one" "You're joking. Is there anything in it?" (Lift cover: Witness a wood, a couple of irons, a wedge and a putter) "Ooooo K. Carry on..." The most irritating was doing rifle quals in Lewis for the mobilisation, and for some reason the OIC decided to run people through two 'three-shot groupings', then kick us off the range to let the next batch of shooters come on. Most of us would have zerod on the third group, but we all had to wait... NTM |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:26:49 AM EDT
[#9]
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:29:18 AM EDT
[#10]
Well, it wasn't the stupidest, but it was pretty darn funny...
Our platoon had a green LT for JOTC (Jungle school in Panama). One of the instructors threw an arty simulator, so we all get down for the whistle and the bang. I just happen to look back and see the LT down on his knees, BIG doe-in-the-headlight eyes. The RTO finally gives him a nudge, and he yells "Three thirty, 200 meters!" It's kind of hard to run to 3:30! It's not blowing up a helicopter or anything, but it was some pretty good comic relief in the crappy jungle! |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:31:37 AM EDT
[#11]
Oh yea! I’ve done many a police call on the range’s at Graf. I was aviation, we had to police up the 20mm cases and links from the Cobras and collect up TOW wire! The first thing before we went out was a range briefing about not touching anything laying around. We had a map with the firing positions marked out but it never failed that the aircraft would sometimes drift off a bit......we stumbled upon a lot of unexploded ordnance! Some of the unexploded stuff dated back to WWII!!! You really don’t have an idea what's laying out there though, till you see it from the air! |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:34:13 AM EDT
[#12]
3:30  |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:35:13 AM EDT
[#13]
Let me guess, this was in the Philippines? |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:36:25 AM EDT
[#14]
The stupidest thing? I don't know where to start.
The strangest? Some dead guy floating face down off the coast of Japan. |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:40:15 AM EDT
[#15]
taggeed
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:43:30 AM EDT
[#16]
Night fire when we first got our M1s. D66 tank fires up the range tower with 105mm HEAT. And missed. Blew a crossmember off of the tower structure. Round must have landed in the national forest somewhere. We were at Ft. Polk and I believe Range 41, IIRC.
Peason Ridge training area. Cav scouts drive across this field, well, mostly across the field. M113s all get stuck in Camp Swampy mud. D Co decides they want to drive tanks across anyway since the tracks on the tanks are wider than the tracks on the M113s, so they should make it, right? After the tanks get stuck, you could step up off of the front deck onto the ground. So, then the M88s come along. They hooked up to the tanks and then the M88s get stuck. We ended up having to call engineers and aviation assets to get those old M60s unstuck. Had a Battalion Cdr one time call commence fire while Cav Scouts were downrange at Ft. Irwin... Hell, I did some pretty damned stupid stuff with claymore mines, but I still got all my fingers! 
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:43:54 AM EDT
[#17]
Nothing happened incorrectly in your incident. Per the FAA:
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:45:34 AM EDT
[#18]
Unexploded ordnance is not your friend. |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:48:30 AM EDT
[#19]
A number of things, but the all time stupidest...
One of the guys in my barracks apparently thought he was going to night school or taking a correspondence course to be an EOD tech (this was at Ft Bragg and we lived in the old style wooden barrecks built in the 40's/50's). He used to venture down to one of the live fire ranges for the Cobra gunships and collect all sorts of unexploded goodies from that particular range and others. Apparently there is some sort of clearing mechanism for the 40mm grenade launcers... if one jams, the weapons officer hits a switch and it clears the jam by ejecting the round along with several good/unfired rounds still linked together. Mr. bomb disposal had dozens of these unfired 40mm rounds stashed underneath his locker. One Friday/Saturday night while everyone one else was out boozing and cruising, he was buisily sawing, filing and drilling away on one of the rounds (for God knows whatever reason). Luckily the CQ for the night happened to walk in on the guy. I don't know exactly what went down, but when myself and my buddies had returned for the night, the barracks was sealed off and the real EOD disposal unit was on scene. From what we heard later on, if the asshat had sawed about another 1/8th" more the grenade would have gone off. Later after the investgators got through with him, they discovered he had another stash in the woods of more unexploded 40mm grenades, mortar rounds, cluster bomblets and a 2.75" rocket. |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:49:07 AM EDT
[#20]
.
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:52:48 AM EDT
[#21]
That is so fucked up it has to be true 
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:54:55 AM EDT
[#22]
Had a relatively hot maintenance support girl ask me for a dip (chewing tobacco for those not in the know) once. Needless to say, I was turned off from that point forward.
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Posted: 8/11/2005 6:58:22 AM EDT
[#23]
Another stupid thing I saw at fort hood was a tank driver who knowingly drove his M1A2 onto a flooded street because he thought the tank could float. He had his hatch open and flooded the tank he almost died getting out of the tank. It sunk like the Titanic
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:05:45 AM EDT
[#24]
W-T-F? |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:09:04 AM EDT
[#25]
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:09:30 AM EDT
[#26]
when i was stationed at Ft. Bragg, we were at the M203 range one morning. it was cold, and there was a GP medium set up w/ warm soup and coffee inside. it was on the right end of the range and actually, to be honest, a BIT CLOSE to the supported (small wooden plank w/ a plywood front used to rest a rifle on to steady it) positions. we were all standing outside w/ our soup and coffee when this female rests her 203 on the board (203 barrell BELOW the board!!!!) and fires. punches through the plywood........i guess the round, which was an H.E. round, went JUST far enough to arm.........the concussion blew crap all over us, everyone went to the ground, etc. she was escourted from the range w/ the quickness.
idiot. |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:23:02 AM EDT
[#27]
Man, during an FTX, we were doing a night infiltration excercise....we got to the objective, secured it...I was on perimeter security, and for whatever reason, I happened to look directly at the arty simulator when it went off....I saw this tiny pin prick of light which grew into a huge, perfect sphere. Needless to say I couldn't see sh*t for about 5 minutes. But it was so weird looking at the blast, like what you see when you watch films of a nuclear blast and you see the growing perfect sphere... |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:24:00 AM EDT
[#28]
The army is filled day to day with ordinary stupid stuff.
Most of the "large economy grade stupid stuff" I've seen involved four things. Armor, Live fire ranges, fatalities, and Ft Hood. One of the outstanding contenders in the "non-fatal" category was a marine reservist mortar crew that fired 170 degrees off the range fan. Some farmer up by Gatesville got a new pole barn out of it.
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:25:32 AM EDT
[#29]
A really fucked up story is this tank loader who decided that instead of quitting drinking early on sunday he would just continue drinking until monday and slowly ween himself down. The problem was he was on a tank table range on monday. He filled his canteens with vodka and went to the range. By Midday he was so drunk he tried to load the gun twice he did it another time before the TC yelled at him. One hour later he didnt get out from behind the gun quick enough and it hit him. The MPs found out he was in danger of alcohol poisoning he was so drunk. He went AWOL later and they checked his room and found all kinds of dildos and gay porn. Turns out he was gay and initaly got drunk at a gay club in Austin.
From that day on the first sergeant would say before every range" is anyone going to be guilty of drinking and tanking before we start this thing" |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:31:33 AM EDT
[#30]
One of our tankers put a round through the water tower on Ft. Irwin during a night fire. Oops.
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:36:37 AM EDT
[#31]
When I was an Operations Specialist on a DDG (guided missile destroyer) in the Navy, we were on training ops off fhe eastern coast and were supposed to shoot down a drone as part of an AA missile test, but we never could spot the damned thing on radar. I was on a old non-NTDS console and the Captain was looking over my shoulder along with other officers and I was marking suspected blips only to find they were static, and finally we were informed that the drone had run out of gas and hit the ocean. The Captain was pissed, but not at me, because he could see that the radar was simply not marking the target well enough to track it. (drones are smallish anyways) We recovered the drone and went on with anti-submarine training and damned if the sub didn't win the mock battle against us. I was on the dead reckoning tracer getting bearing/ranges from the sonar room and that damned sub was doing the craziest manuevers I'd ever seen. We were manuevering hard ourselves and the ship was a fast one, but we eventually lost contact and the sub was able to photograph our ship through its periscope.
...those were the days... |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:38:50 AM EDT
[#32]
I witnessed three USAF reservists baking biscuits in a paint oven...not healthy.
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:42:47 AM EDT
[#33]
A few members of our squad were asked if we wanted to go on a Lapse drop for some brass during a brigade FTX. We loaded up our gear and procedeed to board the C130. One guy, the platoon comedian was always talking crap and telling jokes. We all stowed our gear and planted our asses precisely where the load master told us to...except for SPC4 Dumbass Jokester. Once in the air, he hopped up on top of the load and started singing and telling stories. We were all entertained until the back door began to drop. The buttons on his cargo pockets got caught in the cargo netting. From there his feet got stuck. His face went from Wesley Snipes black to Woody Harrelson white real fast. The C130 began its dive and pulled up hard. The parachute went out and so did the line of airforce pallets loaded with rations, ammo, and one US Army Spec 4.
When we got back in the air, the jumpmaster told us he landed ok and was shaken up and very dusty, but other than that ok. He got and Art. 15 and lost 2 stripes when we got back to garrison. |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:44:48 AM EDT
[#34]
Holy crap! I bet he had to wash his BDU bottoms and grungies after that! 
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:48:18 AM EDT
[#35]
AT, 1994, FT McCoy WI (where else?). We were in the barracks on a shower run. Some guy was in the shower....He had a bar of soap with a hole cut in the middle, working away like he was all by himself.
That little tidbit made the rounds REAL quick, even out in the woods. He was a nutjob anyways, but still...
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:48:27 AM EDT
[#36]
 Haha, and everyone else on the plane probably pissed themselves from laughing! What happened to the load master on that bird? |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:55:15 AM EDT
[#37]
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Posted: 8/11/2005 7:56:40 AM EDT
[#38]
From a buddy who was an M1 platoon commander in the 80's in Germany. Two M1s are loaded on a train. A guy is traversing the turret and doesn't realize that for some reason there's a round in the breech. He fires a round into the other M1 sitting on the other car.
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Posted: 8/11/2005 8:08:36 AM EDT
[#39]
Those things are great. Invariably someone has their eyes open at 0100hrs when someone sets one off. Then they go running into a tree, trip on shit, run the wrong way... They really screw with your nijght vision. It's like being totally blind for a minute or two, and it's 20 minutes until you really get your vision back. |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 8:14:54 AM EDT
[#40]
I spent months on liberty all over the far east before AID's.
'nuff said? |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 8:15:11 AM EDT
[#41]
Truthfully, I don't know what happened to the load/jumpmaster, he was Air Force and outside my chain of command. I was laughing my ass off at the jokes and stuff, but when the door opened, none of us were laughing. We feverishly tried to get him unhooked for cargo netting. We all laughed our asses off once we found out he was ok. We all took turns buying rounds of beer for him when we got back (seeing how he was light a few stripes and $$.) |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 8:44:31 AM EDT
[#42]
Stupidest:
We were taking a hop to Panama in a C-130 when some brain surgeon decides to get some shuteye and lay on top of one of the stuffed-to-the-gills pallets at the rear of the plane. He gets on top and binds his hands up under the netting to avoid rolling around. Two hours into the flight it's starts getting rough and gear and bodies are bouncing around. A high pitched yelp comes from the rear of the plane and we go back to see dingus hanging off the side by his left arm which was twisted at an ungodly angle. He pulled the damned thing all the way out of the socket and spent another 2 hours whimpering until we could offload him. Strangest: Germans.  NorCal |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 8:45:16 AM EDT
[#43]
To coin a Lumpyism --- I guess that fellow didn't study IQ in school much. |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 8:48:38 AM EDT
[#44]
ayup |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 8:52:18 AM EDT
[#45]
You may have seen the same show I did then ;p |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 9:02:59 AM EDT
[#46]
Range 24 ( or 26, I can't remember) Grafenwohr. Range control would not let us clear the range because some jackass dropped empty coke cans into the latrine. We found the lowest ranking guy there, held onto his ankles, and lowered him headfirst into the latrine so he could grab the damn cans. Nasty.
There was also a engineer LT that organized his platoon into a criminal gang with the intent of robbing the Grafenwohr finance office just before end of month payday. He was ratted out by one of his guys and got 30 years hard labor. That was back in 1979 so he should be coming up for release pretty soon. |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 9:03:17 AM EDT
[#47]
Nonsense! It's halfway between 3 o'clock and 4 o'clock.  I would've killed someone to get a chance to go to JOTC. ETA my stories. Most tragic, not necessarily stupid: Some buds of mine got stuck on a detail cleaning up 30mm brass on one of the ranges. Supposedly EOD had check the area and cleared it, but apparently they missed one. While some guys from another company were scooping this crap into empty cans they found a live one and it went off. One troop dead. Most stupid: After a JRTC rotation we were doing police call on the range. One of the rocket scientists in the company finds an unexpended arty simulator. So what does he do? He gets one of his cohorts and cuts it open. Then he pours the flash powder or whatever out on the ground. THEN HE FUCKING LIGHTS IT. It was like a miniature sun; you could see their fucking shadows on the trees. It was in slow motion... crazy. Result? No eyebrows on both of them, one with 2nd and 3rd degree burns on his hand and forearm, one with 2nd degree burns on his forearm. Dumbass was rolling around on the ground moaning and bitching. Fucking idiot. 
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Posted: 8/11/2005 9:04:36 AM EDT
[#48]
My CO had us do COD Close Order Drill in the SAND at 29 stumps, what a fucking asshole.
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Posted: 8/11/2005 9:09:00 AM EDT
[#49]
I was at Warrior Base in Korea a couple of years ago doing an EIB trainup. We were just getting some high-speed tents put up, complete with wiring for electricity, lights, cool stuff like that. The wiring for the lights was going to be dug into the ground down the center of the tents, right where we usually walked.
While the korean workers started to dig, they found an old anti-tank mine armed and sitting about three-to-four inches under the earth, right in our path for walking. We'd been walking right on top of the thing for almost three weeks. Probably not a danger because of corrosion and all that, still... crazy. |
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Posted: 8/11/2005 9:09:32 AM EDT
[#50]
Tag for later when I have more time.
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