When they turn to flee there is just one Marine corporal. BUT!

He turned to the 12 prisoners that were behind him and said, "I'll give you 15 minutes extra sleep for every one you catch."

That was one on-the-ball Marine! Probably had well-polished boots, too.

I regret to say that I wasted my youth by not wasting it enough. I was disgustingly well-behaved, conscientious, and respectful to my elders. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have deliberately gotten myself into a lot more trouble, just for x and giggles.

The closest I've ever come to rapidly absconding with someone else's property, was the time I was in a motocycle store with my brother, who was drooling over a particularly fine ride. He turns to me and asks "How quickly can you run with a Kawasaki 250cc under your jacket?"

I declined the chance to experiment.

Come to think of it, I could have had a much more eventful and exciting youth if I'd followed the example of my brother.

Stuart, with my admittedly limited experience with our prisons, I think it was a good decision on your side to decline the "experiment".

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This whole internet thing is probably not a passing fad.-Ronald Brak
While speech might be free, consequences cost.-Doodler

I was Army but I don't normally engage in inter-service rivalry as there's enough losers inside one's own branch to keep one entertained for a lifetime. Nevertheless, that was very funny, I don't care who you are...except maybe if you're a Marine.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

The closest I've ever come to rapidly absconding with someone else's property, was the time I was in a motocycle store with my brother, who was drooling over a particularly fine ride. He turns to me and asks "How quickly can you run with a Kawasaki 250cc under your jacket?"

I harbored exactly the same kind of thoughts while visiting the Evergreen Aviation Museum and seeing the beautiful little Curtriss-Wright A-22 on display. For any airplane lovers out there who find yourself in Oregon, I heartily recommend visiting the Evergreen Aviation Museum. They have some fine aircraft on display (many of them airworthy) and nice people running the place. Just remember, I have dibbs on the A-22.

I would have been him $100 that I could run faster than 15 mph. If he didn't accept, I would have bet him $300 I could run faster than 20 mph. If he didn't accept, I would have bet him $500 I could run faster than 30 mph.

If he never took the bet, oh, well.

If he did, I'd lay my jacket on top of the seat, sit on the bike, fire it up, and run away.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that.

I am human. Fully human.

But can you slip it under your jacket?

I feel that way about the Curtiss Seagull at the Canada Aviation Museum.

Yeah, it doesn't fit under my jacket. Whenever I'm there, I can admire that machine for hours.

That plane is so sweet looking, I'd be willing to try!

Well, I grew up with a man who spent twelve years in the Infantry, six of those mechanized, in Germany. On the dedecated night shift. Sadly we lost him some three years ago, due to a motorcycle accident. (Though the "barbershop" crowd is hinting at murder. They might try to run their case past some actual critical thinkers first.)

If any of you all served under a Sargent Tony Rios, later Toscano, in Germany, he is gone. He enlisted with his stepfather's last name, then changed it to his mother's maiden name. His reason's.

He told of the time one of his men, through a serious break down of procedure, led to the repremand of several of his favorite soldiers. They were doing a huge set of field manuevers. They had all returned to thier laager and were securing their vehicles when he called up to one of his men, a man I heard about in card and letter for years, who was a British national in the US Army, whether or not the 50 had been unloaded and secured.

"Yes, Sargent Rios!"

Then he squeezed the triggers and fired a round of fifty into the bivouac area.

A loud boom, a clang, a whine. Then all the lights on that side of the laagar went out.

Now it wasn't really his fault, he just pressed the trigger. My friend Tony would say this poor Brit was always a lightening rod for this kind of thing. It wasn't his fault, there should have been two inspections to the weapon, done by other people, prior, that should have confirmed it was empty. Including a rod with a measured stop inserted down the barrel to absolutely be sure. It had "passed" THAT test. The poor British kid was just there.

Let's follow this round, shall we?

Of course it's got to go into the officers mess tent and smack into that huge four bank coffee pot. Lengthwise.

And you don't have to be JayUtah to figure out that that much kinetic energy striking a thin skinned vessal full of fifty gallons of hot liquid in an enclosed space is going to be attention getting. Of course the round didn't stop there.

Now at the time Tony told me this man's title but I forget and don't want to mis-speak. But he was the senior enlisted man in this excercise. It hit his cot which had his sleeping bag on it. It tore the bag in half lengthwise AND did the same to two whole cartons of Marlbaros. Both cartons cut lengthwise like on a bandsaw. (Which after everything boiled down was the only redress he ordered of the British kid. Two cartons of smokes)

The bullet finally stopped in a big towed diesel generator. Killed it deader than dog poop. Had a major melt down after it was struck as it was generating at the time.

So Tony's favorite E-4, (the rod inspector), became his favorite E-3. Some scalliwags painted a big coffee pot (with steaming stick figures running from it) and a generator on the shielding next to the gun.

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"The beauty of that discussion of averages is that you don't have to be an expert in Apollo or in photography in order to see where this time study "analysis" breaks down. You just have to be, well...not an idiot." -JayUtah

Army troops can be amusing at times. Back around 1987, a couple guys at Fort Carson decided it'd be a good idea to steal a self-propelled howitzer (looks like a tank but isn't) and drive it up I-25 to Denver. I don't know but alcohol might've been involved.

Sure enough, they took the vehicle and started driving north up I-25. There was no way the police could stop them so they basically set up an unofficial escort. This was no easy task. The vehicle would lose a lot of speed going up hills but then go really fast downhill. Getting ran over by a vehicle weighing around 40 tons is very, very bad. Eventually, they either ran out of fuel or broke down only to be arrested soon afterwards. One of the guys was recently discharged so he was turned over to the civilian authorities. I don't remember for sure but I'm pretty sure he got some jail time out of his little adventure. The other guy was still in the military and soon took up residence at Leavenworth. It's possible he's out by now but I really don't know.

A good friend of mine was a First Sergeant for a transportation company on Fort Carson. It was a good unit but it still had its bad apples. One day, Lonnie told me about the number of troops he'd help end up in jail and about their infractions. It was funny and sobering at the same time. One guy's case sticks in my mind. He was due to get discharged but decided to go AWOL and leave a day early. They didn't find him for over 30 days so the charge was upped to desertion. He also ended up in Leavenworth. Knucklehead.

Speaking of unauthorized discharges of the noisy kind: I was working in our arms room. It's pretty boring. So I decided to practice my quickdraw with a .45. The armorers are armed naturally. Of course I unloaded and played a while until that got boring. So I slapped the magazine back in and holstered...and then decided to try one more turn and draw. I was fast but low. I blew a .45 hole in the door. Missed the coke machine fortunately and hit a bar on the arms cage across the hall which shattered the bullet.

So that left me a round short. The ammo gets inventoried at every shift change. I took one out of a rack in the middle to replace the one in the magazine and went looking for an extra round. Turns out a lot of guys had extras...just in case. Some civilian, some military. I got a military one, different lot number but nobody pays attention to that anyway, and replaced the one in the rack and got away with it.

Boredom and guns don't mix.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

Ya think?

I've heard a story of some "genius" coming back from South Africa's little undeclared war in Angola. He was carrying a rucksack full to bursting with "liberated" live munitions - assault-rifle rounds, RPG rounds, mines, anything he could pilfer. (OK, so the actual inventory of that rucksack may well have grown a bit in the telling )

So he comes back on a plane that lands at [ Jan Smuts / Joburg / O.R. Tambo ] airport, and leaves his bag next to his chair while he visits the "little room". Everybody else gets up to board the bus to the city, but our hero is still in the bathroom. The corporal sees the unattended bag and asks who it belongs to. No answer, so he starts opening it to look for a name-tag.

At that instant, our Darwin-award candidate steps out of the bathroom and says, "Oh, that's my bag!", just as the first piece of contraband falls out...

Just hours away from being discharged, doofus-head gets a few years in Detention Barracks.

And he didn't get very much sympathy from his peers, either. Most people aren't too happy to find out that they've just spent several hours sharing an airplane cabin with live, unsecured weapons!

The Goose is good for the gander! And the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum rivals (if not surpasses) the National Air and Space Museum in the aircraft realm. I was amazed at the detail of information provided on the SR-71 and the fact that it lets you get up close and personal with it, without blocking engine intakes/exhausts, etc., as the do the ones on outdoor static displays.

I'll not contest you for the A-22. What I'd like is an F2G-1 Super Corsair. The last F4U Corsair mod, the F4U-4, had a 2,450 hp engine, a loaded weight of 14,669 lb, with a max speed of 388 kts, and a rate of climb of 3,870 ft/min.

By contrast, the F2G-1 Super Corsair was powered by the same engine as used in the Spruce Goose, the Pratt & Whitney R-4360-4 "Wasp Major" 28-cylinder radial engine, rated at 3,000 hp. It's max GTOW was 15,422, with a max speed of 371 kts, and a 7,000 ft/min rate of climb.

So, while slightly slower, it had nearly double the climb rate, making it ideal in it's interceptor role.

Sadly, only one aircraft still exists. It's owned and flown by Bob Odergaard of Kindred, North Dakota.

Fuel use? At cruise, a mere 100 gal/hr.

If you're ever in Oregon again, or if you live their, catch the Tillamook Air Museum. It's huge, but the blimp hangar in which it's housed is so much larger than the museum part takes up perhaps just 1/8 of the floor space. This museum has one of the most outstanding and comprehensive collection of WWII aircraft I've ever seen, better than either Evergreen or the NA&SM.

Looks like a Canuck-type aircraft!

Actually, it looks like something built for "The Hardy Boys meet Tom Swift."

It's a beautiful antiquity, Torsten - no doubt about it.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that.

I am human. Fully human.

Why Mr. van Onselen, I was too! Do you know how hard it is to go through a whole four year enlistment and never be written up once? From bootcamp to discharge? Anybody here can tell you that is difficult.

Why? The officers loved me! I had a remarkable God-given talent for being able to fathom English spoken with a heavy Asian accent. Came from where I grew up. From junior high on I had a lot of refugee friends. Where I learned to pronounce the name "Nguyen" (new-yen) A lot of these officers were from the midwest. The "I" states, where soy sauce is an exotic spice and black pepper is "hot". This was before now.

Boy, after I made Petty Officer I ended up escorting all sorts of dignitaries the highest ranking of which was the Air Marshall of Oman. An Officer and a Gentleman.

I just deleted several paragraghs of less than gentlemanly behavior from another nation's officer corp. They were nice guys for officers and we didn't know then ethnic Japanese can't drink alcohol like those of European descent. A half dozen boiler makers (after a big dinner and spaced over two hours!) we were like, "Dudes!" Fortunately we were off the beaten track and all good. I've never drank with Japanese enlisted oddly enough. Guess I never met any who spoke english, (or wanted to speak to me.)


AND we were NOT stealing someone else's property. Scumbags stole other people's property. And got beat up badly for it too. We worked too hard for the money. My fault I guess, for using the word "stolen". It was Naval property redirected to further other Naval missions than originally intended. Sheesh.

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"The beauty of that discussion of averages is that you don't have to be an expert in Apollo or in photography in order to see where this time study "analysis" breaks down. You just have to be, well...not an idiot." -JayUtah

Donny B, I'm not ignoring you. I thought I posted a couple of long stories about heavy seas operations, in different threads but I can't find any. I used to tell sea stories over at Fishindex and have been confusing the two places lately.

Let me collate my thoughts and get back to you on this.

It will be the next major story subject I promise.

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"The beauty of that discussion of averages is that you don't have to be an expert in Apollo or in photography in order to see where this time study "analysis" breaks down. You just have to be, well...not an idiot." -JayUtah

Whew, glad I didn't just space out.

I have to say, I was pretty impressed with that footage of the carrier dipping her nose in the water. I suppose she was a lot smaller than a modern flattop but still, not exactly a tiny ship. Just watching it made me a bit... queasy.

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)