Practical Joking in the Military

I ran into one of the guys I was in the service with today. We got to talking about our time in the service and one of the subjects that came up was the practical jokes that we pulled and the ones we fell for. I thought I'd share a couple of mine. I'd like to hear yours
 
I joined the Navy in 1985. The practical joking started the very first day. I have to say that because I was ex-ROTC I did not fall for the relative bearing grease joke but at least one of my fellow recruits did. I was able to make it through boot camp and A school without falling for one. I reported to my ship and avoided falling for any of the jokes for several weeks. I was sent for and avoided the Bosun's Punch, the Relative Bearing Grease, and 50 feet of Gig Line. I didn't realize that if I had just fallen for one of the simple ones they would have stopped. I finally fell for the Seabat. This involved removing a deck drain fitting placing a cardboard box over the hole and using a broom handle from the lower deck to make the box move around. I was told that a Seabat had been trapped and asked if I wanted to see it. I said yes and when I bent over to look in the box I got swatted on the ass with a broom.
 
The best one that I ever did was a few years later. I was serving on a tender that had one of the few mixed crews in the Navy. We had a SA assigned to our watch that I sent down to female berthing to see the Chief Yoaman who was the senior female aboard to ask for 50 feet of Fallopean Tube. Everyone including him got a good laugh out of that one. I doubt that I could get away with it today.

It is funny how the times change, but the pranks don't !!!  Working in a Crypto-Comm center dealing with 'other-folks mail' back in the pre-cell/satellite days, we had our own 'errands' for newbies.
Carbon-paper rubbing of a persons headsets while they were on a pit-stop or coffee break was common, yet many fell for it over and over.
Having a newbie tape-record certain signals so they could be run by the direction-finder guys at a later time to locate the transmitter seemed to catch new guys over and over as well. ( FYI you must do a DF shot on a 'live' signal to discern from whence it was transmitted...)
Tieing a series of constricting knots in headset cords was a sure-fire way to slow down the morse-code being copied by new operators (NOT).   In RTTY the mission of slowing signals to make for easier copy was to use a device called a baud-stretcher (imaginary)..many hours were spent trying to locate one.
  And on a more personal note- We had a Chaplin (Major) who was an arrogant holier-than-us guy, who wouold come thru the center to encourage the troops to maintain their high moral character while serving in Japan. He had to have an escort in our area as he was not cleared to be near some of the machines we used. I would always assign one of the troops who had the uncanny ability to flagulate on request, with terrible clouds of green fog... I mean real frog-chokers !!!
We would wait til the Chaplin begain his rant against sins of the flesh, then I would give Dennis the signal and he would (standing next to the chaplin) "Cut-One".  Worked  every time for over a year...cut short the rant and the visit immediately !
I am sure I can come up with more, but some are still classified due to the folks were were listening to.
 
On another scene, some years later...One of the best uses for ARBY's Horseradish Sauce was to empty my receptionist's hand-lotion squeeze-bottle while she was on vacation, then fill it with the white Arby's Gunk.  When the lady returned and started using her lotion at her desk one morning, she got it almost up to her elbows before the smell got to her... Try it, it was a spectacular stunt !

mayor al


It is funny how the times change, but the pranks don't !!!  Working in a Crypto-Comm center dealing with 'other-folks mail' back in the pre-cell/satellite days, we had our own 'errands' for newbies.
Carbon-paper rubbing of a persons headsets while they were on a pit-stop or coffee break was common, yet many fell for it over and over.
Having a newbie tape-record certain signals so they could be run by the direction-finder guys at a later time to locate the transmitter seemed to catch new guys over and over as well. ( FYI you must do a DF shot on a 'live' signal to discern from whence it was transmitted...)
Tieing a series of constricting knots in headset cords was a sure-fire way to slow down the morse-code being copied by new operators (NOT).   In RTTY the mission of slowing signals to make for easier copy was to use a device called a baud-stretcher (imaginary)..many hours were spent trying to locate one.
And on a more personal note- We had a Chaplin (Major) who was an arrogant holier-than-us guy, who wouold come thru the center to encourage the troops to maintain their high moral character while serving in Japan. He had to have an escort in our area as he was not cleared to be near some of the machines we used. I would always assign one of the troops who had the uncanny ability to flagulate on request, with terrible clouds of green fog... I mean real frog-chokers !!!
We would wait til the Chaplin begain his rant against sins of the flesh, then I would give Dennis the signal and he would (standing next to the chaplin) "Cut-One".  Worked  every time for over a year...cut short the rant and the visit immediately !
I am sure I can come up with more, but some are still classified due to the folks were were listening to.

On another scene, some years later...One of the best uses for ARBY's Horseradish Sauce was to empty my receptionist's hand-lotion squeeze-bottle while she was on vacation, then fill it with the white Arby's Gunk.  When the lady returned and started using her lotion at her desk one morning, she got it almost up to her elbows before the smell got to her... Try it, it was a spectacular stunt !

 
Al, I was a Radioman in the Navy. Do you know what Top Secret Tape Chad is?

Yeah, we had the "TSCW" Tape Punchers.  ..and told the newbies to organize the chad bits alphabetically !!! ( and if we were really goofing on them, they had to use the Cyrillic Alphabet to do that task !!)