Your Funny, Humorous or Incredible Military Stories

[comiso90]

As a newbie at Comiso Air Station in Sicily, I was excited to indulge in my new favorite sport - SCUBA diving. A couple of people who had been there for a while offered to show me a new SCUBA spot they were anxious to try called "Porto Paolo." I mentioned Porto Paolo to some other co-workers and they warned me against going. "Porto Paolo? you mean porta potty! they're messing with you, they dump raw sewage there." I shared this concern with the people that I was going diving with and they said that they were just messing with the new guy. "Don't listen to them, Porto Paolo is a great place to dive." Determined not to be the subject of any hazing, I decided that if the people were willing to go with me, how bad could it be??????

I went diving there with my 2 guides and soon to be ex-friends.

20 minutes into the dive, and 30 feet down the water was unusually cloudy. Fragile, ribbony wisps of white paper floated buy. Strange clumpy material hung suspended in the water.

That old sinking feeling set in. I surfaced to get a better look. Twenty yards away, my fears were realized. There was a pipe dumping RAW SEWAGE. Bands of toilet paper stuck to our equipment. My god, was that disgu.sting!

Yes gentlemen, I have been diving in raw sewage!

One bright point, I found a gold necklace worth $1000 on the same dive! Still, I dont think it was worth it.

[Matt308]

And those Aholes went with you? And the joke was on whom?

[wilbur1]

Originally Posted by Matt308

And those Aholes went with you? And the joke was on whom?

Yea they were probably looking for that necklace

[comiso90]

Originally Posted by Matt308

And those Aholes went with you? And the joke was on whom?

They didnt know either. They over exaggerated their experience. they were horrified too.

I wanted to take a bath in clorox. For years if I need to makemyself puke, I'd think of that day!

.

[wilbur1]

[pbfoot]

Originally Posted by comiso90

They didnt know either. They over exaggerated their experience. they were horrified too.

I wanted to take a bath in clorox. For years if I need to makemyself puke, I'd think of that day!

.

Guess your not keen on plumbing

[davparlr]

WOW! That tops everything.


Next entry,

Background. After the initial support noted in the previous post, the US started recognized active support for Israel. Due to the fact that only Portugal provided any support, we had to stage out of Lajes AB, Azores. Staging meant that a crew flew to Lajes and went into crew rest awaiting the next aircraft, a new crew, coming out of crew rest at Lajes would take the aircraft, fly to Israel and back, go into crew rest and another crew would take the aircraft back to the US and so on. Lajes was full of crews on various stages of crew rest, awaiting aircraft to fly. These were interesting missions. We had to avoid all controlled airspace which required us to split the straits of Gibraltar, and avoid all land masses and fly the borders of airspace control. In addition, two carriers were stationed in Mediterranean just in case the Libyans decided to stick their noses into our business, they didn’t. Near Cyprus we picked up Israeli escort fighters and flew into Tel Aviv. El Al stewardesses served us box lunches (girls were nice, food so-so) while we unloaded. One of the guys supervising the unloading told us that the ammo we were bringing would be fired in 30 minutes! Close front. Then we had to fly back making it a long trip. Now the story.

We had gotten back from Israel and were waiting for our next aircraft. When we got off crew rest, I called ops to see when the aircraft we would take would land. They told me about 24 hrs. Just three hours later, we were alerted to go fly. However, the duty officer told me he could not locate two of my enlisted personnel, an engineer and a loadmaster. I thought, I’ll bet the men called ops like I did and got the same answer. “Did you call the NCO club?” I asked.

As I was filing my flight plan, I was interrupted by someone calling my name. I was then informed that one of my crew members was in the brig. It seems one of my engineers, a multi-striped sergeant who was about to retire, had refused to pay his quarters bill. He was authorized a private room and he had been put in a room with other crewmembers and he wasn’t going to pay. Remember, I said that there were aircrews all over the base, some sleeping on the hanger floor. One of the ops officers went and bailed him out and it appeared that we would be able to make the flight. Upon arriving at the aircraft, sure enough, all were present and all seemed well. That is, until I recognized that the two crewmen, the ones that were not jailed, were potted. The loadmaster couldn’t find the aircraft if he was standing next to it. The engineer was at least on earth but not fully functional. I was fuming and now I had a big problem. Should I refuse to take the plane, which I could with inoperable crewmembers, or I could complete the mission. It didn’t take long to decide to go, I had one good engineer (although a jailbird), and we had no load, so I didn’t need a loadmaster. There no load to tie down and cg would be easy to figure. Going would be a lot less trouble than not, and that’s including judicial action. Did I tell you that my navigator was a light bird who was head of the squadron nav section? That didn’t help. Anyway, the rest of the flight was uneventful except that it was the quietest flight I have ever been on. On arriving at the base I went to see the Squadron Commander (who already had an encounter with me). He told me he didn’t need to talk to me, just go and write a report. Apparently the nav already got to him.

Well, I have hijacked this site long enough. I have just one entry, my scariest landing, my proudest mission, and my most heartbreaking mission.

[davparlr]

Okay, the last installment,

Scariest landing. We were flying an exercise with the Army, flying out of Ft. Cambell, Ky., I believe. As at Lajes, we had about six surplus crews pre-positioned to maintain smooth aircraft support for the exercise. The mission was over and I pulled the job of flying the return to McGuire with these crews as passengers. This is called “dead heading”. The weather at McGuire was predicted to be marginal. When we arrived, things had deteriorated, an occluded front (bad) set squarely over the base. As we began our approach, the runway was above minimums. The problem was not ceiling nor visibility, but winds which were gusting with changes of direction. The C-141 was a great aircraft to fly, very predictable, reliable and powerful. However, it could be a handful to fly in a crosswind with a natural desire to lift the upwind wing and strong tendency to windmill (swing into the wind). This was multiplied several times in a gusting crosswind. Crosswind limit was 25 kts.(29 mph). The runway we were using, landing to the south, had Ground Controlled Approach (GCA, precision), i.e. radar directed approach, and a back course ILS (localizer only, non-precision). I was flying the GCA with localizer backup. Turbulence was moderate and the dead head crews were getting sick. Runway conditions were wind gusting 15-35 kts, swinging plus or minus 90 degrees to runway heading. I knew this would be fighting the bronco on this approach. I decided to make a go at it and go-around if conditions were out of tolerance. The GCA controller was having problems getting us over to the flight path. I noticed that drift (we had a drift meter and that is wonderful) was 30 degrees off heading. At one point the controller called out “left of flight path, left of flight path, too far left for safe approach, wait, I think you can make it”, not reassuring, but I had already made correction due to drift and I also had the back course localizer. Now I had to deal with the crosswind landing so I had someone tally off the changing wind (talking directly to the tower). Luckily, as we got near the runway, winds dropped off a bit and normal landing was accomplished anticlimactically. After I shut down the engines I was wet with sweat and could hardly get out of the seat. I think everyone was glad to have their feet on the ground.

Proudest mission I always liked medical evacuation (medivacs) missions. They seem so constructive compared to carrying bombs and helicopters and other war devices. The C-141 provided medivacs from Vietnam and any other place in need (we also brought back bodies of fallen servicemen, which I am glad to say I never had to do). This particular mission started in Germany. We were scheduled to go home but got an aircraft set up for an emergency medivac. We took off out of Frankfurt and flew to Madrid and picked up an augmented medical crew. We took off out of Madrid and headed for Abidjan, Ivory Coast (located under the hump on the west side of Africa). Because no country would let us fly over, we had to fly around the hump, which made for a long flight especially considering that we had to return, thus the augmented crew. Our mission was to pick up a Peace Corps worker who had an ulcer. The mission went smoothly. I remember that, on our return trip, tired of flying, looking back and seeing this magnificent aircraft, an augmented flight crew and an augmented medical crew and a nearly twenty-four hour mission all put together for one Peace Corp volunteer. I was proud to be an American.

My most heart breaking mission. I hate to end with this story, but it was near the end of my AF career if not my last mission. I was pulling Presidential support and, of course, we launched, this time as a medivac. Oddly enough, there were two C-9 Nightengales broken down in separate places. Both had burn patients en route to Kelly AFB (a famous burn center) in San Antonio. We stopped in Washington D.C. for the first pick up and then on to North Carolina for the second pick up. Out North Carolina, heading for Kelly, we got a phone patch for the doctor. I heard him argue for a while and ended the phone patch. He said there was a request to divert to Jacksonville NAS to pick up a man who was in a jeep accident and had third degree burns over 90% of his body. He had argued against going but was apparently talked out of it. At Jacksonville, I requested fuel and was told that I had to wait as the base was running an exercise. I informed the ops officer that I was an emergency medivac and if I did not get priority, my next call was to Commander Military Airlift command. During peacetime, I believe that the only aircraft that has priority over a medivac is Air Force One. He complied immediately. We loaded the patient and his parents. The C-141 was configured with about one third of the space taken up by passenger seats in the front, the passenger seats in a C-141 face aft. In the rear were medical cots stacked with the injured and the medical staff. As I was taxiing out, the doctor instructed me to stop. He had to operate on the new patient, opening his chest so he could breathe. Remember, his parents are on board and, with the aft facing seats, watched all that was going on. Over Mississippi, the doctor requested a minister to meet the plane at Kelly. He did not tell me he had passed away, nor did I ask. It is a real pain legally for a person to die on an aircraft. We landed and I helped carry the guy off the plane. It was a sight I will never forget. The entire crew was emotionally exhausted and went into crew rest.

I know that I deviated from the thread, but I though you guys might find these interesting. One of the interesting parts of flying airlift, other than going all over the world, is that you tended to be involved in everything.

Sorry for being so verbose.

[Wildcat]

Thanks for sharing these very interesting stories Davparlr !

[A4K]

Yep, thanks alot, mate!

BTW, can you tell me how the drift meter works? I have to make one for my C-47 model, and was curious about it's function.

[davparlr]

Originally Posted by A4K

Yep, thanks alot, mate!

BTW, can you tell me how the drift meter works? I have to make one for my C-47 model, and was curious about it's function.

Hmmm, I am not sure of how a drift meter fits on a C-47 model. To us it was just a gage and an unobtrusive antenna. I doubt many C-47s had that kind of drift meter. There is one, I believe, that predates radar and uses a ground looking telescope and a navigator looked at the ground and made measurements on drift and ground speed. I don't know if that was ever used on a C-47. Others may have better data on this system.

For the C-141, I believe that it was part of a doppler radar system that generated drift and ground speed. Both extremely useful for navigation in pre-GPS days . The drift was also a great help in flying approaches. The C-141 had state-of-the-art navigation systems for 60s and early 70s. This was also before good interial systems.

[A4K]

Yep, that was the one, mate! I got close up photos of it from the RNZAF Museum as fitted in our C-47s, just wasn't sure how they used it. Thanks!

[comiso90]

Thanks Dav,

[hurricanemk2]

My grandfather swears this tale is true but I think it may be a stock tale about aircrew .He was a Flight Engineer on Lancasters opperating out of Waddington in Lincolnshire .
One night slated for a raid on " The big city " the Lanc was over its max safe weight and was struggling to get airbourne , as bill and the pilot worked on getting the thing up and rapidly running out of runway , the mid upper gunner came on to the RT and said " Excuse me Skip but if we're going by road there's a 30 mph speed limit ! " It broke the tension and off they went for a non eventful sortie .
Bill swears thats what happened and I , for one , believe him .

[A4K]

Love it, mate!