TapTheForwardAssist posted:

I've gotten to the part of the thread about losing serialized gear, and crashing two helicopters trying to find one missing M9 in Iraq, and I got a good one.


Digging a deeper hole via international arms dealing

So after OIF-2, our battalion has a real mess of records, trying to reconcile the different accounts and figure out our combat losses, regular losses, extra poo poo we somehow acquired, etc. My recollection is that part of the complication was guys getting medevac'ed with all their gear and the hospital confiscating their weapons and us trying to eventually get them back.

Midway through this reconciling process, L Battery's armorers realize they have two M16A4s in their cage that aren't on their books. So of course the immediate reaction is "hey, free rifles!" One guy took one home to keep at his on-base housing as a souvenir, the other gave one to his dad as a gift. A couple weeks go by and more records get cross-checked, and the armorers are given an updated sheet which now has them two A4s short.

Now at this point, there are a couple smart ways to go. The absolute best would be to immediately gather the rifles together, smuggle them back in, and come out saying "oh hey we looked under a pile of barrel-bags and found them or they fell behind a shelf or something" and the issue would be resolved with at the most an rear end-chewing for not looking hard enough. The next-smartest would be to fully disassemble the rifle, take a hacksaw and cut the serial number area off the lower and throw the lower all duct-taped up in junk and chuck it in a dumpster far from home, and then take the unserialized parts and sell them on AR15.com

Nope. At this point "tripling" or even "quintupling" seems too light of a word. They decided to X-down to the whatevereth power. So one guy calls this girl he knows who allegedly has some underworld connections, and she agrees she can make the rifles disappear forever and cut them in on the profits. So they drive the rifles to her apartment IN TIJUANA. Yup, hid them in their car and smuggled stolen federal automatic weapons into Mexico.

After a few days of missing rifles, eventually NCIS gets involved. They apply Occam's Razor and figure that armorer theft is the single simplest solution, so they separate the two guys and interrogate them and both immediately narc each other out. They provide NCIS the girl's phone number, and they call her and say "Listen carefully, you have one hour to wrap the rifles up in a blanket and take them to the front office at the San Diego border crossing, ask for Inspector Smith, hand him the bundle and just walk away. If you don't meet him within one hour, we're giving all your information to the Federales and telling them you're smuggling automatic weapons for the narcos." Girl ain't dumb, so thirty minutes later she's handing over both A4s to a NCIS agent and the issue is resolved.

Each guy got nailed with I think three years of hard time, and both were married and I can guess that a first-termer marriage isn't going to fare well with three years of separation. So yeah, a truly impressive display of taking a handful of poo poo and turning it into a world of poo poo.

nullscan posted:

I showed up to my first assignment at Luke back in 2002 all full of excitement and vigor and pride in the Air Force, ready to do my awesome job of network switching and crypto routing systems or whatever the hell we were called. Then I found out I was working on MCE/TAOMs which are forward air-control vans and very much on the Atari/Apple IIe end of the network/computing spectrum.

Whatever, the shop was cool and there were plenty of cool guys to work with, including DBZFAN1. This guy was huge, barely ever in regs, failing PT tests back when they were still bike-tests and who's only civie clothes included multiple button-down DBZ shirts. But as a young, dumb, Airman he was a Mentor and in charge of a lot of the new guys' (Four of us from the same class/time) upgrade training.

Over time we witnessed a few of his troubleshooting skill classics such as 'Main computer's not working, power down whole van at the Power Unit then back on like a light switch' or 'Serial cables that connect externally to van won't seat correctly, use a hammer' but nothing will top the Great Swap of 2002.

There are four operator positions inside the TAOM, and (back in the day) they all were powered by 10k, 30k, $100k+ huge fuckoff circuit cards located in each position. One day position #1 starts having problems with it's (Three color!) CRT, not drawing tracks right, looking all kinds of hosed up. This is the 'Live van', the one van we needed up to run 'Sorties' as the other vans were used for training and could deal with a down position once and awhile. So it was kind of urgent we get it back up. Everybody else was either busy or off somewhere being invisible so DBZ and by buddy from Tech School get picked to go TS.

Two hours of troubleshooting pass, just DBZ and Buddy locked in the van. Finally one of our SSgts starts to get curious and heads out to the pad to check up on them. Five minutes pass and he's suddenly back in the shop, ashen faced as he heads to our back office where the NCOs sit and closes the door. A little bit after the two Airmen come back in looking sheepish and sit at our meeting table not saying a word as the back office erupts in shouting between the NCOS.

They suddenly all run out and head to the van and as they leave SSgt Curious grabs DBZ out with him. Buddy then starts to tell us the tale of Troubleshooting. Apparently with all power applied, DBZ had him pull the card bay out of position #1 out (This is ok, they slide out and have idiot lights on the side to help T/S), then the card bay on position #2 (Ok, sure, he wanted to compare cards?).

DBZ then has Buddy start pulling lit cards from P#1 and hot-swapping them with P#2. "Odd," DBZ says, "The fault followed to P#2 but yet it's still broke on P#1!"

Anyone with EE/Computer experience can tell you that if it's not explicitly hot-swappable, you're supposed to shut down power before doing any of this swapping (not to mention the safety risks as we were dealing with HV), so he basically just fried the previously good card from #2.

"Well, uh, we'll try the next card." And so on, until he had fried 25 cards in 3 operating positions ("Because maybe it was just P#2 not working right, let's try the cards in P#3!") totaling nearly 700k in damages.

Luckily four of us from tech school who had just arrived, Buddy included, had to go to formal MCE training the next month so we missed all the fallout, but DBZ didn't lose rank or have to pay for anything. Apparently it was decided that the ACs (ECUs) that keep the vans cool had tripped and a critical overheat situation burned 25 cards in 3 positions but not the 4th, as DBZ wasn't fully qualified to be leading the T/Sing and our NCOs were terrified of it coming back on them.

Fake edit: gently caress that's a lot of words.

Inferno985 posted:

My favorite Marine ever was a most unusual fellow from somewhere in eastern Tennessee who was about 5'1"/105 lbs, balding, had a cleft lip, and strong Appalachian southern accent. His name was McCamus. He loved rap music and patriotic poetry, and would occasionally brand himself "MC Amus" and spit out a rap he claimed was freestyle, but actually the same lyrics every time.

I was a Sgt when he checked into the battalion, and I distinctly remember his Alpha blouse covered in wrinkles, as he had apparently wadded it up in his sea bag during the trip from MOS school to Camp Lejeune. It was too late in the day to have him go fix anything, so the other Sgt in the company office and I told him to go ahead and check in with the 1stSgt, who promptly started screaming obscenities before he could even report.

He would sometimes wake up at 3 or 4 am and brew coffee over an open flame he lit in the grill outside the barracks. It was awful and he didn't strain the grounds. He would then knock on peoples doors asking them if they wanted any.

If he didn't wake up at 3 or 4 to brew coffee, he would sleep in and miss formation/pt/whatever because he would go to bed at 1 or 2 and not set an alarm. Thankfully he was not in my platoon so I didn't have to deal with fixing this stuff.

He would hit on ANY girl, regardless of rank, level of attractiveness, etc. He would use corny pick up lines like "did it hurt..... when you fell from heaven?" Every single girl I know of that he hit on thought it was hilarious; he was so small that not a single one of them ever thought he was creepy.

My company went on a field ex where I ended up sitting ECP duty for our COC the entire time so that the junior guys could get practice in conducting ops. The ex lasted a week, and every single night he would come to the ECP and regale me with his life story, which subsequently changed each time he told it. There were some common elements: someone always died, sometimes it was his dad, sometimes his girlfriend, sometimes his unborn baby after his girlfriend got hit by a bus. His little brother beat him up, his girlfriend got an abortion just to spite him, he joined the Marines Corps to get away from Appalachian hitmen who wanted him dead. I have no idea whether he realized he was telling me different life stories every night.

He was slated for a MEU because he was the only one around to fill a specific MOS line number on the T/O, and managed to deploy despite threatening to kill his SSgt because they had no one else to fill his job (ELINT).

Ultimately he got kicked out of the Marines for taking TS paperwork outside the SCIF. A friend of mine was lucky enough to be on duty when NCIS dissected his room to make sure he didn't have any more. When they went to knock on his door, no one answered. They used the master key to get in, and found him butt naked and asleep on the bathroom floor, having konked out while taking a dump. According to my friend, his room contained over 100 hand made knives consisting of crappily carved handles with cheap blades he took out of folding pocket knives, homemade bow and arrows that barely worked, bottles filled with a urine and semen mix (the rooms in the barracks had their own bathrooms) berries he picked from the forest that he was storing in his clothes drawers, and a $250 bottle of scotch that he wasn't old enough to legally drink. After this event, the same friend told me that McCamus had asked him for advice on how to turn everything around and become a good Marine. This was after something like 4 NJPs and a pending ADSEP, he honestly had no grasp of the fact that he was done at that point.

Inferno985 posted:

I want to say he checked in to 2d Radio Bn sometime in 2008. He was kicked out after I PCS'd, don't know the exact timeline. Most Marine SIGINTers in during that timeframe should know his name, he's still famous even now.

Another one I just remembered, two of my Marines was at the rec center and noticed that McCamus was logged onto one of the computers there. He got up and left without logging out or closing the browser, so naturally my guys went to check out what he had been doing. He was roleplaying as a werewolf on some kind of chat room, so they immediately printed the logs. The chat logs showed an intricate roleplay between him and some other folks involving werewolves, werebears, rabbits, and God knows what else. Naturally, they were sexually explicit. He also was inserting names into the story of other people from our unit who he didn't actually hang out with...I guess he just thought they were cool enough dudes to be characters in his roleplay chat.

Wild T posted:

The only thing Schaeffer liked more than anime, porn, and anime porn was EVE Online. Dude had sunk something like 10 G's into virtual spaceships on A1C pay and spent every minute he could in his room, playing it or moderating some EVE forum on the lovely Bagram circa 2006 internet connection. Every time I read about Goonswarm loving with EVE Online players, I remember Schaeffer and hope they hosed with him the hardest.

bird cooch posted:

All of my interactions with the French military boiled down to three points.

1.the french are dicks

2.the french are good at their jobs.

3. The dick french that are good at their jobs will run you the gently caress over if you aren't good at yours and leave you there, come what may.

EBB posted:

https://www.idontevenownatelevision.com/2016/05/30/056-armor/


I read Armor years ago over a couple drills and it was bad.

CommieGIR posted:

Oh, the ships come alive all right...

The entire point of the game is to give one of the ship girls a wedding ring. I'm sure you can figure out where it goes from there...

Midjack posted:

Kantai Collection or Kancolle for short if you want to know more (you don’t). Trap sprung etc. but yeah, between the two of them you have your big titty battleships from all belligerents in World War II represented. I don’t get it either, I love me some giant robots but this poo poo is incomprehensible.

Smiling Jack posted:

Hasidic / Orthodox jewish thug squad used for internal security and beating on outsiders.

They have cars and uniforms that look like the NYPD. There are a few different groups, they also fight each other occasionally.

Unlike Hatzollah (vollie Jewish EMS) I have never ever had a positive interaction with Shorim.

Smiling Jack posted:

I had a Jewish neighbor who described WW2 as a "good time" because he loved killing Nazis. He also went AWOL to Switzerland and fought Swiss cops, escaped back over the Swiss border and banged a bunch of "red Cross girls" after the surrender before being demoted and shipped home.

He described WW2 as a good time because he drank booze, banged chicks and killed Nazis.

... he was fairly drunk when he told me this

ughhhh posted:

Two year ago my friend passed away and in remembrance of him me and my friends decided to go watch Robocop wich was playing at Lincoln center in nyc for the Verhoven (who he loved) retrospective. The theater there has a lobby with a side room where events and talks are held and the walls are lined with full size signed portraits of actors and directors who have been there. That night the room was empty except for the portraits lining the wall. So after the movie me and my friends decided to sit down and reminisce about our friend. Our group consisted of 5 young college age people and three of them were well, attractive young women.

I think it was fleet week so a solitary sailor in crisp white uniform saunters into the theater and the security guard who checks for tickets pays him no mind as he stumbles into the theater and heads straight to the bathroom. He comes out and heads straight for us who were sitting in the far end of the room. He was a short rotund latino man who had piercing blue/grey eyes like a husky (possibly contacts?). He starts trying to flirt with the women in our group and mentioned that he recognizes the actors on the walls. He grabs a huge signed portrait of draco malfoy off the wall and says he loves him. As we all head out of the theater together, he gives the security guard a salute while cradling the huge heavy portrait and just saunters out of the theater with us. He tried to desperately join us wherever we were going, but because we were in a depressed mood we used the huge portrait as a reason he couldnt ride with us in our car.

Later as we were driving down the westside highway we see Draco Malfoy slowly drifting in the breeze out towards the hudson with the sailor with piercing eyes nowhere to be seen.

King of Bees posted:

There was a civilian gate runner at Mayport not too long ago who pulled up drinking a 4 Loko, told the guards to gently caress themselves and then punched the gas through the gate before slamming into the immediately deployed barrier. He might of died, not sure. He was airlifted out.

Looked it up. Yeah he dead.

Bonus 2nd gate crasher story even stranger in link.
https://www.news4jax.com/news/military/man-dies-of-injuries-from-1st-of-2-crashes-at-mayports-main-gate-this-month

BIG HEADLINE posted:

Boy oh boy my uniform's gonna get me laid any day now just you watch boy oh boy oh boy!!!

chitoryu12 posted:

Phanatic posted:

Edit: Nevermind.

Stravag posted:

I need a ruling. Funny, idiot, or warcrime

piL posted:

I'm sorry if I'm just old fashioned, but horses should not be doctors.

Memento posted:

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/ne...s-investigates/


Someone's about to catch a Code Red.

PathAsc posted:

Episode 1

Stravag posted:

The spines stopped lighting up during sex almost immediately in the series conveniently or got tied to truly being in love/ able to make a kids with a human if memory serves

holocaust bloopers posted:

This is a post reminder so I can write up the the following stories:

In-flight tampon encounter

How telling guys in the squadron about your sister being a suicide girl is a self-critiquing mistake

Barricading yourself in a bathroom because the A1C you’re rooming with on TDY is home schooled, into knives, and is a nudist

LingcodKilla posted:

That’s funnier than the time my friends found out my mom was an exotic dancer.

“THE WEBSITE CLEARLY STATES NO NUDITY gently caress YOU GUYS!!!!! “

She was a pretty good belly dancer and made $200 an hour for gigs.

piL posted:

If I were to marry both a general and a major, I'd be considered quite modern.

canyoneer posted:

Icon Of Sin posted:

“Swimmers in the same pool” makes me think of the dwarf my soldiers in AK told me about. The story went that she was snuck into the barracks in a rucksack, somehow there’s a tricycle involved (riding it naked around the barracks, as one does), and that around half the company had a turn with her before they snuck her back out. Bonus: they told me she worked at Child/Youth Services on post if I ever wanted a turn