Military BS Stories or the last liar wins.

[Nazgul]

Because of security clearance I held and a military drivers license I was tasked at times to drive various things. Busses mostly but cars at times.

Had to report in Dress Blues once to pickup 2 Admirals at the airport in Norfolk once. There was some high level conference with security measures in place they had to attend.

Saluted when I met them and started to load their bags in the trunk . One grabbed the bag from me and put it in. He said "Sorry, this is my wife's luggage , if anything happens to it she will kill me".

Don

 

[actaeon277]

Because of security clearance I held and a military drivers license I was tasked at times to drive various things. Busses mostly but cars at times.

Had to report in Dress Blues once to pickup 2 Admirals at the airport in Norfolk once. There was some high level conference with security measures in place they had to attend.

Saluted when I met them and started to load their bags in the trunk . One grabbed the bag from me and put it in. He said "Sorry, this is my wife's luggage , if anything happens to it she will kill me".

Don

Even Admirals have bosses.

 

[Alamo]

More Navy stuff.

2 Sep 1920



Detail:

https://www.usni.org/naval-history/wreck-of-the-S-5

I thought this would get more interest, but maybe not because you have to follow the link.

Teaser: that’s not the Conning tower or sail sticking out of the water. That’s the stern.

 

[Alamo]

… Busses mostly …

Had to report in Dress Blues once…

Which reminds me of my first lesson in civilian contract support.

August 1980 I think, almost the last day of AFROTC “Field Training.” This was a four week (for me) training session at Lackland Air Force Base Texas basically that from the outside looks like boot camp (although it’s really not the same thing). Cadets lived in open bay barracks left over from World War II, lived and worked as flights (platoons), lived and died by the Field Training Handbook, marched to and from training events and classes, chow hall, the works.

At the end of the Field Training there were a couple graduation events, including a Dining In. Dining In is an Air Force custom borrowed from the WWII RAF. Formal dinner, Big Shot Speaker, Mess Dress uniforms, toasts and protocol, trips to the Grog Bowl (in those days) for protocol violations -were a lot of fun if done right. Dining In is for unit members only, Dining Out includes spouses/guests. Cadets didn’t have Mess Dress uniforms so we wore our Field Training blues: short-sleeve light blue shirt, dark blue pants, low-quarters flight cap. Otherwise it was all the same.

Our graduation Dining In was at the Lackland Officers Club, which was not close to the cadet barracks. This meant bussing about 250 cadets to and from. Technically I supposed we could have marched, but it was several miles, it was August in Texas, and stuffing a couple hundred sweaty cadets into the O’Club for three or four hours is a horror not to be contemplated.

The plan was for the base contractor bus service to take us to the O’Club by 1800 and some lucky airmen from the motorpool to drive a bunch of non-sober cadets back to barracks afterwards, around 2200 or so.

So at 1700 or so the cadets formed in the common area, a couple busses started shuttling cadets to the Club, and our training officers locked up the buildings and drove themselves to the O’Club, leaving us in charge of ourselves.

Since there were only a couple busses, they had to make repeated trips to get all 250 or so cadets transferred, and the roundtrip was taking awhile. They started with A Flight, I was in G flight, so I wasn't going to get as much time at the bar before formalities began as A Flight, lucky bastards.

Anyway this shuttling dragged on until 1800, when suddenly the busses stopped coming, leaving about 40 or so cadets, me among them, stranded. It took a few minutes to realize this, of course, and then a few more minutes to figure out what to do. But with 40 future leaders on the problem, a plan was soon formulated and executed: we broke into the CQ building and called the O’Club. Orders were received: “Standby, we’ll figure something out.”

20 minutes later an AF blue school bus pulled up, the door swung open, and the Commandant of Cadets, a Lieutenant Colonel resplendent in Mess Dress and Medals, sat in the driver’s seat. “HOP ON, BOYS*!” he bellowed, we crammed on board, and he chauffeured us over to the Club just in time for the formal start.

I did manage to make it to the bar and down a quick drink before things started.

It turns out that the bus contract with the base ran from 0600 to 1800 daily. So at 1800 the contract drivers parked the buses, clocked out, and went home, despite the fact that there were still cadets waiting to be transported. The airmen that were going to drive us back after Dining In were not scheduled to report to duty for another couple or three hours and would have to be tracked down. Apparently the Commandant of Cadets said screw it and checked out a bus himself to come rescue us.

That was probably one of the better leadership lessons that I got out of Field Training.


*Female line officers were still pretty new in those days, and we had only about one or two female cadets per flight.

 

[henry0reilly]

I floated from The Rock (Okinawa) to the ROK twice. Best chow I ever had in the service was on ship. Air Force dining hall close second. I was in the field in the early days of MRE, I never would have thought I'd miss C rats. In 1980 we got C rats packed in the 60's, the peanut butter was separated into oil and solids.

 

[actaeon277]

I thought this would get more interest, but maybe not because you have to follow the link.

Teaser: that’s not the Conning tower or sail sticking out of the water. That’s the stern.

Well, being in an underwater tin can seems to scare people.
And one that doesn't want to come back.. even worse.

I've read just about every wwii sub story I could find.
So, I could bore everyone if they want.. more so than I already do.

 

[actaeon277]

One sub was sunk in Japanese shallow waters.
Forward end stuck up.
They has to fill ballast tanks to bring it down, to keep it from showing location.
Eventually they had to evacuate out the escape trunk.
Some sailors refused to evacuate, and perished.
Some were picked up by IJN and taken to camps.
The Navy didn't know their disposition till the few remaining were liberated.

USS Tang.
One of the 'heavy hitters' of wwii subs.
Unfortunately, hard hitting puts you in Harms Way.
And sooner or later..

 

[actaeon277]

One of the big risks was pulling into port, and being attacked by your own side

 

[KellyinAvon]

Remember this?

The commanding officer in the photograph was just relieved of his command of the USS John S. McCain.

Navy Deletes Humiliating Rifle Photo…

This is the original tweet pulled from the military story thread in the breakroom. When I first looked at it, I thought they had changed it because there was a white dude in it, and couldn't have that, could we? They did put a female picture in that slot, hence my original opinion...

www.indianagunowners.com

 

[actaeon277]

 

[actaeon277]

 

[Nazgul]

I have a lot of respect for any flight deck monkey . They operate in an environment that is only understood by someone who was there.

I was on the flight deck several times during ops moving weapons that required security. It was an eye opener. And these guys do this 10 - 12 hours at a time, day and night.

Watched a sailor get blown off the deck into the water by jet blast once. I would guess it is 65' - 70' to the water, all while the ship is moving. There is always a helo in the air just in case of a man overboard during flight ops.

He was quickly rescued without injuries. Yeah, and they would often take a Marine with a rifle in the helo to guard against sharks.....

Don

 

[Nazgul]

My time in active duty as a Marine was at the end of the Viet Nam war. I told them I wanted to got here so they sent me somewhere else. The draw down of troops was happening so it wasn't a surprise. I made SGT quickly and applied for an officers program, the Marine Enlisted Commissioning Program. They sent you to college to get a degree. Unless you were destined for a specific MOS there was a large list of approved degrees. You had to maintain a good Gpa, something like 3.5 if I remember right.

Because History was one of my hobbies I chose a degree in it to make it as easy as possible for myself. Went to the University of Washington Seattle.

You are assigned to an ROTC unit. It was a mix of Navy and Marine personnel. Lots of ROTC students, Navy/Marine enlisted personnel and officers. The officers were working on their Masters or PHD's for whatever reason. They were also tasked with various supervisory duties as needed.

During Viet Nam one of the more bada** groups were the Patrol Boat River guys. They went were it was dangerous and saw a lot of action.

So SGT Don takes a liberal arts class for an easy grade because it was mandatory, something like Music History. Well I got a rather low grade for the class due my lack of interest in the subject.....oops. This led to a visit to a review board to find out why I screwed the pooch in that class.

Enter the story a Navy LT Commander, I can't remember his name. He was short and pudgy. He tried to go to PT with us Marines only to fall out right away. He had sort of a goofy personality.

SGT Don goes to the review board for his bad grade and said LT Commander is the OIC. I sit right in front of him and he looks at me with penetrating deadly eyes I hadn't seen before. To make a long story short, my overall GPA was very good and I didn't fail the class so got an epic a** chewing and let go.

We had sort of motivational meetings where the officers, all of which were recent VN vets, gave a talk on their experiences. They included pics and were interesting.

The day the LT Commander above gave his talk I discovered he was a PBR boat captain who saw a LOT of action. The pics he showed were impressive, including many when they were under fire. One showed his boat from another PBR after they were hit by an RPG. Everyone was firing as one sailor was trying to stuff something in the hole in the hull.

Turns out the pudgy Navy officer was a true warrior with nerves of steel. Learned not to judge people by first impressions from that one.

Don

 

[Brad69]

2 ID HQ Korea 1998 SSG/E-6 Brad was in the HQ PLT. So I was basically manpower in a PLT that has the CG in it. I was the assistant NCOIC of the jump TOC. We moved to select locations and if the main TOC was hit the CG would jump to us. We were self contained with M113’s and M577 command vehicles.

We practiced at least monthly and often stayed in the field for weeks. We were fully staffed with the back up team reason being if the main TOC was hit you cannot transport everyone.

War game from the pentagon they killed the CG the ADC (M) BG and the ADC (S) BG. We had a S3 Col that took over I was told to go do LZ operations made contact all the LZ stuff popping smoke. It was a CH-53 strange the Army doesn’t use them.

It landed US marines on the side. 20 or so people climbed out. MG was a Marine and the BG was Air Force. They took charge I did not know that all General officers are basically interchangeable.

 

[actaeon277]

Turns out the pudgy Navy officer was a true warrior with nerves of steel. Learned not to judge people by first impressions from that one.

Yup.
A lesson many don't learn

 

[actaeon277]

They took charge I did not know that all General officers are basically interchangeable.

At a certain level, they become paper pushers.

 

[Alamo]

… I did not know that all General officers are basically interchangeable.

That is why they are “generals.” They are supposed to have knowledge of and command over all parts of the forces. It’s why the service war colleges have many students from each other’s services. Obviously there are some practical limitations but that’s the idea, especially within the service. If I recall correctly, Army general officers no longer cite their branch of commissioning when they pin on the first star.

 

[Alamo]

Sometimes the military can be fun:

 

[actaeon277]

Sometimes the military can be fun:

Often the military can be fun.
When you actually get to do the stuff you signed up for.
The problem is, you get to do that <1% of the time.

 

[Alamo]

… the jump TOC. We moved to select locations and if the main TOC was hit the CG would jump to us. …

The NATO E-3A Component is at the NATO Airbase Geilenkirchen, as far west in Germany as you can get. The end of the runway is literally on the Dutch border. That’s as far away as you could get from the Soviet forces and still remain in Germany. Still, it wasn’t very far away, and if the big one kicked off, it was in jeopardy.

When originally constituted in the early 1980s, the plan apparently presupposed we would have some warning and all E-3s and crews would disperse to FOBs and the base ground support would pack up and drive to RAF Waddington in the UK. “Waddo” was the RAF’s AWACS base. This was complete nonsense, as far as I could tell there was never any actual written plan to make this happen in an any case, trying to actually do that at the start of a war was nuts.

When I got there, there was apparently some change in leadership and thinking, and it became the plan that we would fight the war from where we started, right on Geilenkirchen airbase. We started to bear down heavily on stuff like NBC training and actually launching airplanes under war time conditions, and such. The Component commander robbed some staff offices and squadrons to set up a small exercise cell to create realistic scenarios for us to practice. The American LtCol in charge of the sale was actually quite good at this and we had some really useful learning exercises to figure out how what component should go to war.

The operations building had this weird basement extension. You went downstairs into the basement of the Ops building to the Command Post and then through some doors into the extension. It wasn’t really a bunker; it wasn’t reinforced, it was just a basement with no building on top of it. This became the headquarters and extended command post during exercises, and if it came to it, war. There were air vents to allow circulation, but they were not remotely configured for NBC operations, or anything of the like. But that’s all we had for the moment.

During exercises, I became a small cog in the operations headquarters function, and worked in the Command Post extension, usually in NBC gear. We did have an alternate command post site with skeleton staff in another building a few hundred yards away, and we developed procedures to redeploy to it (if there were any survivors). The alternate CP did keep copies of certain information in parallel, and this being the old days I had runners regularly taking over hard copies of stuff to be filed over there in case we had to make the big jump, or someone else had to fill in.

So during one exercise the Exercise cell decides to simulate an air raid on the base. Exercise inputs are made, the siren sounds, people scurry to shelters. The chief of the exercise cell decides to add some realism and has his boys set off smoke grenades around the base. One of them gives his grenade a toss, and it rolls right directly in front of one of the air vents that leads to the command post extension underground. The HVAC system grabbed the plume and pumped it right down stairs.

Downstairs, we are already in MOPP4 and waiting out the air raid when holy shiznizz the place is full of smoke! There was no “exercise exercise, exercise” input for this, so we thought we were really on fire. Everybody grabbed the classified and accountability boards and other stuff we had set aside in case of evacuation, and we hauled ass to the alternate command post, got it set up and running well with the required time.

The exercise chief had some giggles debriefing this after the exercise, but it did point out a major vulnerability of our command post. Rolled into the future years budget sent to NATO in Brussels. The Soviets gave up before we ever got anything done about it though.