Military BS Stories or the last liar wins.

[Nazgul]

Living in base Housing Mather AFB in the 80's. Wife was a Lt in the Med Corps at the hospital. Neighbor on the one side was a B52 driver, his assigned ride was older than he was. Kinda uptight but ok. He would go to the underground ready area for weeks at time . Their B52's were loaded and ready on the pad. I dealt with really big bombs in the Marines and recognized the security measures.
Across the street was a young Fighter jock who flew T37 Tweets giving rides to the navigation students. He was in his 20's from the South with an old pickup truck that had a Rebel Flag for a headliner. Loved talking to him as he was just waiting to get to a real fighter squadron. He talked about going up with his students and getting them to puke. I was jealous when he talked about arraigning flights on those days with piled up fluffy clouds and chasing other T37's around in mock dog fights. His boots were worn at the heels from the rudder pedals.

Don

 

[KellyinAvon]

Spring 1999: young USAF MSgt KellyinAvon is the NCOIC of the Mobility Readiness Spares Packages (MRSP, formerly WRSK) at No-Hope-Pope AFB, NC. MRSP were (in theory) 30 days of spare aircraft parts sitting on 463L (aircraft pallets) that could go anywhere in 24-72 hours. There were two squadrons of C-130-E models (older than me) and two squadrons of A-10s (the Flying Tigers) and we had the aircraft spare parts for all of them.

More to follow...

Edit: one day I get a phone call from a maintenance supervisor. He asks if I've heard about a TDY to South Africa (country with no Status Of Forces, SOFA at the time.) I hadn't, so I called our mobility folks. They said they'd look into it.

Next thing I know I get a call that it's a classified deployment. For starters there are unclassified nicknames for all the classified stuff like this, so I raise the BS flag while pointing out to numerous people it all started with "somebody called me and asked a question."

Come to find out, none other than Hillary Clinton (in 1999 she was neither elected or appointed) came up with the whole South Africa debacle and authorized a Military Deployment to a country with which we had no SOFA. Yeah, the Hildebeast had no authority to do this, but we know how that goes. Like the email server in the bathroom.

Official Passport AKA the "Red/shoot me first" passport. No SOFA, need one of these. We had TWO folks in a squadron of 200 that had these. One (best rank and experience for the TDY) had a dental problem and couldn't get cleared for the deployment.

I think my exact words were, "Well get him in the dental chair and don't let him out until he is worldwide-qualified."

One of the few times TPTB in the 43rd Supply Squadron (and TPTB at the Dental Clinic after the higher-ups made some calls) actually listened to me and the troop went on the deployment.

But wait, there's more!!

 

[actaeon277]

Spring 1999: young USAF MSgt KellyinAvon is the NCOIC of the Mobility Readiness Spares Packages (MRSP, formerly WRSK) at No-Hope-Pope AFB, NC. MRSP were (in theory) 30 days of spare aircraft parts sitting on 463L (aircraft pallets) that could go anywhere in 24-72 hours. There were two squadrons of C-130-E models (older than me) and two squadrons of A-10s (the Flying Tigers) and we had the aircraft spare parts for all of them.

More to follow...

Edit: one day I get a phone call from a maintenance supervisor. He asks if I've heard about a TDY to South Africa (country with no Status Of Forces, SOFA at the time.) I hadn't, so I called our mobility folks. They said they'd look into it.

Next thing I know I get a call that it's a classified deployment. For starters there are unclassified nicknames for all the classified stuff like this, so I raise the BS flag while pointing out to numerous people it all started with "somebody called me and asked a question."

Come to find out, none other than Hillary Clinton (in 1999 she was neither elected or appointed) came up with the whole South Africa debacle and authorized a Military Deployment to a country with which we had no SOFA. Yeah, the Hildebeast had no authority to do this, but we know how that goes. Like the email server in the bathroom.

Official Passport AKA the "Red/shoot me first" passport. No SOFA, need one of these. We had TWO folks in a squadron of 200 that had these. One (best rank and experience for the TDY) had a dental problem and couldn't get cleared for the deployment.

I think my exact words were, "Well get him in the dental chair and don't let him out until he is worldwide-qualified."

One of the few times TPTB in the 43rd Supply Squadron (and TPTB at the Dental Clinic after the higher-ups made some calls) actually listened to me and the troop went on the deployment.

But wait, there's more!!

The Navy had fun trying to ship me (and some shipmates) to Israel .
Not member of NATO.
And not covered by any SOFA.
What a cluster..

Waiting in Sigonella, was told, you guys might be here a while.
Then 2am wakeup, you're plane leaves in half an hour
Don't ask questions..or answer any.

Israeli official met us on tarmac.
With temp visas.
No exit time

 

[KellyinAvon]

Spring 1999: young USAF MSgt KellyinAvon is the NCOIC of the Mobility Readiness Spares Packages (MRSP, formerly WRSK) at No-Hope-Pope AFB, NC. MRSP were (in theory) 30 days of spare aircraft parts sitting on 463L (aircraft pallets) that could go anywhere in 24-72 hours. There were two squadrons of C-130-E models (older than me) and two squadrons of A-10s (the Flying Tigers) and we had the aircraft spare parts for all of them.

More to follow...

Edit: one day I get a phone call from a maintenance supervisor. He asks if I've heard about a TDY to South Africa (country with no Status Of Forces, SOFA at the time.) I hadn't, so I called our mobility folks. They said they'd look into it.

Next thing I know I get a call that it's a classified deployment. For starters there are unclassified nicknames for all the classified stuff like this, so I raise the BS flag while pointing out to numerous people it all started with "somebody called me and asked a question."

Come to find out, none other than Hillary Clinton (in 1999 she was neither elected or appointed) came up with the whole South Africa debacle and authorized a Military Deployment to a country with which we had no SOFA. Yeah, the Hildebeast had no authority to do this, but we know how that goes. Like the email server in the bathroom.

Official Passport AKA the "Red/shoot me first" passport. No SOFA, need one of these. We had TWO folks in a squadron of 200 that had these. One (best rank and experience for the TDY) had a dental problem and couldn't get cleared for the deployment.

I think my exact words were, "Well get him in the dental chair and don't let him out until he is worldwide-qualified."

One of the few times TPTB in the 43rd Supply Squadron (and TPTB at the Dental Clinic after the higher-ups made some calls) actually listened to me and the troop went on the deployment.

But wait, there's more!!

Here's the more!

Seems like there was 4 C-130s going out on this deployment. Three aircraft pallets (one ISU-90, the 90 is 90 inches tall, doors on all 4 sides, has a lot of parts,) a bulk pallet with built-up wheels and tires, brakes, big stuff, and a propeller on the third pallet.

At the cargo marshaling yard: get the pallets accepted, but the aerial port troop says only one pallet is going with the aircraft. The other two will go out on a heavy (C-17 or C-141) going that direction. It's Spring of 1999, Operation Allied Force (AKA the Air War over Serbia) was about to crank up. All the spare strat airlift was going to be going to Germany and Italy. Plus Operations Southern (keeping Saddam in his box, sort of) and Northern (we protected the Kurds M-W-F; the Turks bombed the Kurds T-TH) Watch were still in full-swing.

I was pretty sure those pallets would be sitting a while. I was right. Can't remember how long they sat in the cargo yard (I'd drive over and look at them every couple days) but the troop (who spent a lot of time in a dental chair, see earlier post) had the other two pallets for 36 hours before heading back to the States. Just in time to get the broke and cannibalized planes flying again.

 

[Brad69]

 

[Rick Mason]

Back in the early 1970s I met a cute young sailor in Okinawa, and we got married a few months later. Now, it was a little odd because Mrs. Rick was a Filipina. Nowadays you see that as a common experience in the Navy, but back then it was a real rarity. Of course, there were thousands and thousands of Filipinos who served honorably with us, but their wives and daughters and sisters and nieces were very, very seldom part of the Navy also.

About 2 years after we were married, and two months before her enlistment was up, we joyfully discovered she was going to have a baby in September. At the same time her enlistment was up I got transferred to duty in San Diego.

Because she was pregnant before her enlistment ended, she was entitled to continued medical care as if she was still active duty. As all of you know, when you report to sick call you have to be in uniform. The large clinic at Balboa Hospital had two lines side-by-side, one for the dependents who were seeking care, and the other for the active duty military members who were going to sick call.

Well, since Mrs Rick was being treated as if she was still active, she would go stand in the active duty line where she belonged. So you had two lines, one filled up with mostly wives, many of them pregnant, and many of them also Asian. And you had the other line filled up with dozens of military members all in uniform, and in the middle of them, one very pregnant, very young Asian wife in civilian clothes.

It always got ugly for her at least some point while standing in that line. It seemed like every corpsman running the show thought he was going to play a real power dominance trip on her to show this obviously fresh-off-the-boat, dumb Asian wife just where she was supposed to be. It never really worked well out for the corpsman.

P.S. And I won't even tell about all the times she showed her green ID card to get thru a base gate or PX and got accused of being dumb enough to steal her husband's card and attempt to use it. No one ever even bothered to look at her picture on the card.

 

[SnoopLoggyDog]

My tinnitus is from years working on fighters, moving and loading cargo on the flightline and doing max power runs on the engine test cell or trim pad.

 

[Brad69]

Thanks now my left ear is ringing!

 

[2A_Tom]

View attachment 355730
My tinnitus is from years working on fighters, moving and loading cargo on the flightline and doing max power runs on the engine test cell or trim pad.

Automatic 10% disability.

 

[KellyinAvon]

Military BS stories, here's a BS story from my Military days.

Don't know what made me think of this, but it was some of my best BS ever.

1996: young USAF TSgt KellyinAvon is stationed at the last manned remote Radar station in the USAF, Rockville, Iceland. It was named Rockville because there was nothing there, but rocks.

Sheryl and the kids would be there in about 6 weeks when we got base housing on the main base at Keflavik (7 miles away.) I'm living out at the Radar site where there were maybe 40 still living out there and operations were still business as usual since the new operations center on Keflavik hadn't opened yet.

The people my age (I was 31 in 96) at Rockville... quite honestly they were boring. There were a couple Air Force cops in the building with me, maybe 21-22. These guys were interesting and they liked drinking beer, so I ended up hanging out with them and some of the folks they hung out with.

So a bunch of us are drinking beer and watching TV, not many choices on the TV. Overseas you get AFRTS/AFN and there is a lot of news from different Military news agencies. An Air Force News reporter who I'd seen for years was Rick Sarchet. He was very good at his job, just not exactly a ball of fire.

So somebody in the crowd makes a comment about this guy being a stiff (he did come across a bit stiff) and this lead to an epic BS story.

I just started laying it on thick. Aw man, that guy is an ANIMAL!! He was at Camp Walker with AFKN (Armed Forces Korea Network) when I was across town at K-2. Our Ammo Superintendent knew him in England so he always knew when this guy was having a party and a bunch of us would go over to Camp Walker. Rick would invite every cop he knew on base because the cops would always get called. Dude was cooking yaki mandu in a wok and somehow managed to set the picnic table on fire. That was at lunch and everybody was already tore up!

Years later at No Hope Pope (Air Force Base, North Carolina) my son was playing basketball for a team on base. I noticed a guy in BDUs taking pictures. Sure enough, it was Rick Sarchet. Nice guy.

 

[Cavman]

Average fri or sat night in Korea
. Bunch of drinking mostly all of us underage even though legal age there was 20. Twinkie a really tall pale guy had kept a 25mm tracer projectile from our Bradleys. He thought would be a great idea to set the phosphorus off. He tried to light the end of projectile with his cigarette. Didnt burn. Do we said ya gotta scrape it some. So he did. And again tried to relight it. That worked and it was a brilliant display of red blinding light. While scorching the living hell out of twinkies hand. Luckily it burned out before the ncos came to see what the screaming was and twinkie never even went to sick call for hand.

 

[DCR]

OK, I'm not ex-military, but my BIL was in the AF, moved around quite a bit, and his 8yo son always had 3 questions to ask any new kid he came across.

1, What's your last name?
2. Where does your mother work?
3. Do you live in base housing?

Four years later, I had been dating his aunt for a few months. He had seen me twice, both times out-of-state and both times his aunt had driven us.
Sitting at a picnic table with him, he decided to take my measure.

He started off with a shot across the bow.
1. Is that a Rolex? ans. no it's just a Seiko
2. Is it real gold? ans. it has some real gold in it, but not very much
And then he delivered the zinger.
3. Do you have your own car or do you just ride around with my aunt?

This was about 1992. When I told him I drove a 300ZX we became good pals.

 

[Alamo]

Average fri or sat night in Korea
. Bunch of drinking mostly all of us underage even though legal age there was 20. Twinkie a really tall pale guy had kept a 25mm tracer projectile from our Bradleys. He thought would be a great idea to set the phosphorus off. He tried to light the end of projectile with his cigarette. Didnt burn. Do we said ya gotta scrape it some. So he did. And again tried to relight it. That worked and it was a brilliant display of red blinding light. While scorching the living hell out of twinkies hand. Luckily it burned out before the ncos came to see what the screaming was and twinkie never even went to sick call for hand.

And I bet you guys wondered why your officers and NCOs were always thinking up mindless tasks for you to be doing.

 

[Cavman]

And I bet you guys wondered why your officers and NCOs were always thinking up mindless tasks for you to be doing.

We did do alot of mowing grass in the rain and rearranging the motor pool.

 

[Cavman]

Another korea story as a young man underage wasn't supposed to be drinking down range. But young and dumb and with your buddies.. we had to come back through the gate and we all were doing our best to walk straight and not slur while showing our ID cards. I thought I was doing a good job until the guard held up a dreaded device and said blow. I was like oh crap and started to blow. The guard started to die laughing. And then I realized it was a pen to a pda device. He just started laughing called me a idiot and said better get to your barracks quick.

 

[Brad69]

Thats why the NCO’s had to pull Courtesy Patrol. Lord help you if you got one of the busses going over the bridge of no return.

Two NCO’s to control a bus full of drunks it was not for the faint of heart.

 

[Cavman]

Thats why the NCO’s had to pull Courtesy Patrol. Lord help you if you got one of the busses going over the bridge of no return.

Two NCO’s to control a bus full of drunks it was not for the faint of heart.

Yep. We paid a shop keeper to hide a overly drunk buddy of ours from the courtesy patrol, the mps, and kps. When we were ready to head back before curfew we stopped to get him . He was just hanging out with the shop owner and his family eating and watching tv

 

[Alamo]

Passports.

552 Airborne Warning and Control Wing had a TDY mission out of ELF-1, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for a number of years. TDYs were three weeks for 552 aircrew, four weeks for 552 support personnel, six months for non-552 support personnel. The six monthers griped about that but then they didn’t have to come back, one tdy and done. 552, especially the aircrew, had to go back over and over and over…

For the 552, deployment to ELF-1 was a highly practiced process. Every week a C141 picked up a load of people at Tinker AFB (home of 552) and flew them to Riyadh, dropped them off, and flew the people who had been replaced back from Riyadh to Tinker. Always a stop in Germany in the middle of the night to change C-141 crew, sometimes a stop at Dover or Goose Bay for refueling, sometimes air refueled. The pax were of course self-loading cargo and made the whole trip, 24 hours elapsed time going, another 24 coming back, IIRC.

I was one of the support types. Our unit had blue passports, which were under lock and key in some NCO’s safe as an additional duty. As part of your pre-deployment process you stop by his desk, sign for passport, he gives it to you. He had them in a little file box with a tape label embossed with PP holder’s last name stuck on one corner of the PP so he didn't have to open each individual PP to find correct one.

As I said, this happened every week and it was very well practiced, oiled machine. So well practiced that apparently a little complacency set In.

One of our guys showed up in Saudi Arabia, climbed off the 141 and showed his passport to the Saudi immigration guy, who cracked open the passport and promptly ordered the guy back on the 141 for the return trip. It seems he had picked up the wrong passport, and not only was it not him, but he was white and the guy in the picture in the PP was black. Apparently neither he nor the issuing NCO bothered to actually open the passport and double check that it was the right one.

So the guy he was supposed to replace got to spend another week at least in Saudi Arabia, the guy with the wrong passport got another 24 hours on MAC airlines, with plenty of time to think about the colossal ass chewing he was going to get when he return to our unit.

And ass-chewing was the only way the O-6 commanding our unit knew how to speak. Of course the O-6 had 24 hours to practice by working on the junior NCO who used to be in charge of handing out the passports, and the senior NCO in charge of the junior NCO, and the Lt in charge of the junior and senior NCOs. If I recall correctly the deployment section‘s Lieutenant reported directly to the O-6, but he probably found a random field grade officer to chew on just for the hell of it. He was that kind of guy. And then there was the whole chain of command for the fellow who is coming back in the 141. Thankfully, I was nowhere near this mess, but the whole place smelled like roasted ass for a couple weeks. I’m sure the personnel files of everyone involved got a little fatter documentation for OER/EPR time.

Oh, and pre-deployment checklist was updated to require both the issuing NCO and the recipient to check and sign that the passport was in the correct passport. I think both of them actually had to sign, not just initial, the checklist.

 

[actaeon277]

Passports.

552 Airborne Warning and Control Wing had a TDY mission out of ELF-1, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for a number of years. TDYs were three weeks for 552 aircrew, four weeks for 552 support personnel, six months for non-552 support personnel. The six monthers griped about that but then they didn’t have to come back, one tdy and done. 552, especially the aircrew, had to go back over and over and over…

For the 552, deployment to ELF-1 was a highly practiced process. Every week a C141 picked up a load of people at Tinker AFB (home of 552) and flew them to Riyadh, dropped them off, and flew the people who had been replaced back from Riyadh to Tinker. Always a stop in Germany in the middle of the night to change C-141 crew, sometimes a stop at Dover or Goose Bay for refueling, sometimes air refueled. The pax were of course self-loading cargo and made the whole trip, 24 hours elapsed time going, another 24 coming back, IIRC.

I was one of the support types. Our unit had blue passports, which were under lock and key in some NCO’s safe as an additional duty. As part of your pre-deployment process you stop by his desk, sign for passport, he gives it to you. He had them in a little file box with a tape label embossed with PP holder’s last name stuck on one corner of the PP so he didn't have to open each individual PP to find correct one.

As I said, this happened every week and it was very well practiced, oiled machine. So well practiced that apparently a little complacency set In.

One of our guys showed up in Saudi Arabia, climbed off the 141 and showed his passport to the Saudi immigration guy, who cracked open the passport and promptly ordered the guy back on the 141 for the return trip. It seems he had picked up the wrong passport, and not only was it not him, but he was white and the guy in the picture in the PP was a black. Apparently neither he nor the issuing NCO bothered to actually open the passport and double check that it was the right one.

So the guy he was supposed to replace got to spend another week at least in Saudi Arabia, the guy with the wrong passport got another 24 hours on MAC airlines, with plenty of time to think about the colossal ass chewing he was going to get when he return to our unit.

And ass-chewing was the only way the O-6 commanding our unit knew how to speak. Of course the O-6 had 24 hours to practice by working on the junior NCO who used to be in charge of handing out the passports, and the senior NCO in charge of the junior NCO, and the Lt in charge of the junior and senior NCOs. If I recall correctly the deployment section‘s Lieutenant reported directly to the O-6, but he probably found a random field grade officer to chew on just for the hell of it. He was that kind of guy. And then there was the whole chain of command for the fellow who is coming back in the 141. Thankfully, I was nowhere near this mess, but the whole place smelled like roasted ass for a couple weeks. I’m sure the personnel files of everyone involved got a little fatter documentation for OER/EPR time.

Oh, and pre-deployment checklist was updated to require both the issuing NCO and the recipient to check and sign that the passport was in the correct passport. I think both of them actually had to sign, not just initial, the checklist.

Complacency
the enemy just as dangerous as a real enemy

 

[actaeon277]

Another korea story as a young man underage wasn't supposed to be drinking down range. But young and dumb and with your buddies.. we had to come back through the gate and we all were doing our best to walk straight and not slur while showing our ID cards. I thought I was doing a good job until the guard held up a dreaded device and said blow. I was like oh crap and started to blow. The guard started to die laughing. And then I realized it was a pen to a pda device. He just started laughing called me a idiot and said better get to your barracks quick.

I got carded in a restaurant, one week before my 21st day.
Right in front of the XO.

I hadn't been carded for a drink... EVER.
Cause I looked older.
But no, right in front of the XO it happens.

Next few months at sea, he had plenty of time to remind me from time to time.