Expounded descriptions of some 'bad things' i or others did. Or completely made up sea stories that sound funny but aren't worth any sort of prosecutor investigation. And the oddest part has always been that when i tell tales of 'something we did underway' my family is convinced i made it up. It's when i make things up that they nod and think it sounds believeable.

  1. Making livestock sounds at the airport
    Made a couple of submarine patrols out of Scotland. The sub stays in Scotland, the two crews fly into and out of Glasgow, back to Groton, CT. When the crew flies military, they just say ‘get on the plane.’ The XO and the senior enlisted go a little crazy making sure they have mustered all personnel, no one’s in the head, or trying to seduce an airwoman in the PX or whatever. Commercial flights have to do it differently. ‘Regulations’ require they issue each individual a boarding pass, and that they collect a boarding pass from each individual. The XO and his Flying Administrative Squad form the crew up in a height line, alphabetically by rank. We walk single file through, collecting 140 boarding passes, then take 4 steps and give our boarding pass to another airline employee. The whole endeavor reminded me of nothing as much as moving cattle onto stock cars at the stockyard. So I wasn’t surprised when someone… someone other than me, you understand, but with my sense of humor, started to ‘moo’ quietly as the line started to move. This was enthusiastically picked up by almost all of the other 139 men.
    The XO somehow thought it was embarrassing, unprofessional, and other words reflecting a general ‘stick-up-ass’ approach to life. He was madder than hell the second time we did it.
    The third and final time our crew flew back from Scotland, he made dire (and unenforceable) threats to make sure that no one, no one at all, made any ‘cow’ sounds at the airport. We all nodded seriously and went back to playing with the customs forms we were supposed to fill out. “Yes, I have something to declare: Jeeezus saved me. So did Quetzacoatl!”
    Come the hour, we get off the busses, get sorted into something resembling the muster list to ease the inventory, and wait for the go signal. As the XO gestured for the first men to go thru the line, someone, not me, just someone standing real close to me, but I didn’t see who it was, really, he was behind me somewhere, someone started to bleat like a sheep.
    Nowhere near 140 men took THAT call up, as most of them, I mean, us, most of us were trying so hard to keep from laughing at the sight of the XO’s face.

  2. Allowing junior officers to asphyxiate themselves through unfamiliarity with breathing apparatus.
    One of the safety devices on the sub is the Emergency Air Breather system. Basically, it’s a scuba tank for the whole crew. Pressurized air is available at a number of points throughout the ship, and face-covering masks provided to the crew are designed to plug into this system. So if there is smoke or airborne contamination in the ship, the sailors can move about by plugging into station after station, holding their breath between. There is also a ‘buddy’ capability, so that one person plugs into the system, and another can plug into his unit. One drill, there was a simulation of radioactive material suspended in the air of the missile compartment. All personnel made their way to the exit point and waited for the decontamination route to be assembled. All of us standing around the door, we had used up all the EAB connections and were using more than a few buddy connections. Two junior officers, new to Submarines, ran up, wearing EABs and carrying their hoses. The saw the station, and that it was full, and started to look around to see where else they could plug in. One remembered and buddy plugged into his friend. This only works if the ‘buddy’ has plugged into an air system. But as soon as he did that, the man he plugged into plugged into the first officer’s buddy plug. So the two of them were in a sort of a figure 8, with no air supply. The XO came on the scene as they sank slowly to the floor while the drill monitor and a dozen missile techs watched. I’m pretty sure we’d have removed the masks once they were unconcious, to prevent an accidental death incident. But the XO made sure we never got the chance.

  3. Making ambiguous statements about my position on race relations.
    At one shore facility, some wag thought it would be fun to draw swastikas in one of the heads. The command went crazy. Part of the response was to get everyone into the auditorium for ‘racial tolerance training.’ I don’t remember a whole lot of the lecture, but at one point the chief told us ‘If it doesn’t affect their ability to do their job, it’s none of our business: Race, religion, gender, marital status…’
    One of the swabbies up front suggested homosexuality as belonging on that list. What a response: “I AIN’T TALKIN’ ABOUT NO GODDAMNED FAGGOTS!” Oh. Okay. So SOME meaningless, non-interferring traits are worth bothering about. Fine.
    At the end of the lecture, once the homophobe could get talking straight again, I remarked to a friend, on the way out, that nothing in that hour was going to change MY personal feelings about black people.
    A chief, behind me, pounced. Got my name, division, and went and told my supervising Senior Chief that he knew who’d been drawing the swastikas, and I was ONE OF HIS MEN!
    They got a little excited with each other, about what they were going to do to me. “One of MY men!?! I’ll crucify the little bigot!” “Yeah, we’ll make an example out of him!” “Yeah! That’ll show everyone!” Until he finally asked for my name.
    Now, at the desk behind the Sr. Chief was our department CPO, who’d been with me on a previous command. He’d also met my fiance. He expressed a little concern that maybe, just maybe, the Chief misunderstood what I said in the hallway.
    ”Nope! He said he hates black people!”
    CPO found it hard to believe, but they weren’t interested in his view, so he shut up. I got called in. I noted the COMPLETE silence at all the other instructor desks and the way CPO was biting his lip.
    ”Son! Did you draw any swastikas in the heads?”
    ”No, Senior Chief. I’d never do that.”
    ”You got any way to prove that?”
    ”Well, if I did it, I’d have to hope that I wouldn’t have drawn them backwards…” (To be honest, while I know that there is a right and a wrong direction to draw the arms of the Nazi Swastika, I have no knowledge on a day to day basis of which way is right. And I never saw the drawing in the head. But I was pretty sure the senior wasn’t going to be certain that the moron responsible hadn’t drawn them backwards. Seems to work, he was silent for a moment. Then the Chief nudged him).
    ”Ask about what he said.”
    ”Oh, yeah. Did you say you hate black people?”
    ”NEVER, Senior chief. That’s a damned lie.”
    ”Are you calling me a liar?”
    ”If you’re telling lies, I don’t have much of a choice.”
    ”What did you say when we got out of training?”
    ”I said nothing in that lecture was going to change the way I felt about black people.”
    ”Well, how DO you feel about black people?”
    ”Same way I feel about any people. Some are good, some are bad, and the one I’m engaged to is pretty much alright.”
    The little witchhunt kinda broke down right there…thought the CPO was never going to stop laughing…

  4. Claiming that my time could be better spent downloading amputee dwarf porn
    So, we're at sea. The duty section is mustered on the mess decks for some sort of General Military Training (GMT...also known as Gross Misuse of Time). And the XO is clipping along, until he loses his place in the lecture. He goes silent, trying to find it. Conversation springs up at all the tables. At one point, i turn to the Launcher watch in my section, and the Strategic Weapons System Technician and say 'You know, i could be home right now, downloading amputee dwarf porn.' It was just some throwaway line, nothing to reflect anything i've ever done. But it came just after the XO had found his place. And by coincidence, everyone at every table saw that he was trying to make eye contact to start again...except me. So my voice rang clear across the mess, with no interferring competition to muffle the sound.
    Oh, boy. A little embarassing. But i just looked the XO in the eye and waited for him to start again.
    Patrol ended, turnover dragged like a large animal wrapped around the axle, and finally, we were in our offcrew office. Soon after our return, a guy from Engineering found me. "I found that site" he said. Now, this is a month or two after i made my comment, so i have NO IDEA what he's talking about. So he whipped out a folder of printouts and...showed me. OOH! UGH! Oh, my CHAOS! There really IS an amputee dwarf porn website? Bleh! I felt unclean, and proudly clairvoyant, for a week.

  5. Attending a race riot.
    Admitting to have participated in a race riot, even if I didn’t take sides.
    In the late 80’s, there were riots in Virginia Beach. Tensions between hotel owners, shop vendors and black college students were exacerbated by….well, bias on both sides, and enthusiastic bystanders. The last year we were in Va Beach, people on both sides were looking for a fight.
    Before that weekend, our Code Master Chief got everyone in the hall and told us he couldn’t ORDER us to stay away from downtown VB, but he recommended not going there.
    After the three day weekend, when there were, indeed, riots, MC got everyone in the hall again. Stood in front of each student and instructor and asked if they participated in the riot. He got answers like:
    “Oh, no, Master Chief, I took my family up to Williamsburg this weekend.” And “No, we just stayed at home and hid under the bed!”
    He got to me, I said ‘Yeah, we went down there, but couldn’t figure out which side to take, so we looted a candy store and went home.’

  6. Designing Tshirts.
    IN the time leading up to the riots, a number of people in the area started sporting t-shirts saying ‘it’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand.’
    I think such an attitude contributes to a general misunderstanding in this country that Racism only means being mean to blacks, but whatever. I wanted to market some other shirts, as a backlash to what I saw as racial snobbery reflected in the shirts.
    I wanted toddler shirts that said ‘It’s a baby thing, you wouldn’t remember.’
    Another would have said ‘It’s a white thing, you couldn’t afford it.’
    One with a burning cross: ‘It’s a bigot thing. God wouldn’t understand it.’

  7. 'don't be a Marine'
    First off, let me say i have nothing in particular against any given Marine. Love Marines. They were invented to keep sailors from being hurt.
    But they can be funny.
    On one shore facility, there was the Navy base. Needed ID and a base pass to even be aboard the base. Then there was the controlled area. Needed special permission to be in there. Inside the controlled area was the Limited Area. Where they store the things that may or may not include nuclear components. Needed whee-doggies permission to be in there. Place was just blooming with Marines. They were in towers, walking, posting, roving, and just waiting to commit mayhem.
    Part of the security force was two guys out driving around in a pickup. They tended to hit stuff. Doing about 5mph on patrol, they'd drift off and wake up when they hit something. Usually a building. Once in a while, another vehicle. TopDog Marine had about enough of this. His solution was for one guy to drive, the other to run along behind the truck. Couple days after that started, the driver drifted to the land of Nod again, drove in a telephone pole. The guy running along behind him was in a zone, too, because he ran right after the truck, caught up when it wrecked, ran into the back so hard that he broke his own leg.
  8. 'don't be a Marine' again
    One day while the Marines were drilling for a security violation at the Strategic Weapons Facility, Atlantic, one of the jarheads thought it would be fun to shoot an armadillo. Marine officers are not, traditionally, fond of live weapons fire that does not involve a safe firing range or The Enemy. The Commandant of the Marine Detachment, Kings Bay, had that entire platoon dressed in their spiffiest uniforms (the ones where the collar changes the shape of your throat), and hold a full dress uniform funeral for the armadillo. In July. In the Swamp.
    Every year afterwards, until that commandant transferred, the same platoon dressed up in the spiffies for a full memorial service at graveside.
    No other wildlife has been even threatened by the MarDet since.
  9. Magical Mystery Wake Ups: The human mind is an amazing device. It never really shuts down, even in sleep. So, a funny way to mess with your relief is in the wake up. Don't just poke, prod or bellow until they're coherent. Tap them lightly and make something up. An example was to tap the shoulder and say "Hey, John, we're in Albequerque and it's your turn to drive." Then walk away. When he finally shows up he might say something like, "Man, that was a weird dream. We were driving to Hollywood for the sex monster olympics and we were as far as Albequerque when I took over the driving. Then we." The real fun, of course, is in knowing exactly how much of it was your input, and how much came from inside the little deviant's mind.
  10. Urging junior officers to really whale on the deck with the rubber mallet to verify 'stow for sea.' It's something done before diving, to make sure every hatch, cover, access panel and diving board is stowed sufficiently tightly that it won't rattle while the sub is submerged. Once we're down, there's little we can do to tighten the bolts. The seaman gang and the First Lieutenant usually take care of the tightening, but the officer has to sign off on it. So, we, I mean, some of the line handlers encourage the officer's to feel that it's a really, really important task and they should make extra extra sure. Really slam that rubber mallet against the quarter inch think hull steel. Then we end up explaining to the weapons officer exactly how an Ensign managed to punch himself in the face with his own mallet. Again.
  11. Answering honestly to the rhetorical question 'Would you like to teach this topic?' I never understood asking a question you didn't want answered. Especially when I really COULD do a better job.
  12. Saluting very junior officers riding bicycles and carrying study books. Basic Enlisted Sub School was across the hill from the dining hall. Officer Sub School was at the bottom of the hill, their quarters at the top. Every morning, as we left breakfast and headed for class, bikes full of officers zoomed down the road past us. They usually had two or three big volumes from homework in one hand or the other. We'd salute. We're out of doors and we see an officer, we're supposed to. Experienced officers know that if your hands are full, you don't HAVE to return the salute. You can nod. Or, if your right hand is full, you can return the salute with your left. Officers right out of Officer School don't yet understand this. They return the salute no matter what. They either salute with the books, usually dropping a few volumes, in one spectacular instance hitting himself in the forehead with two of them. Or, they use the off-hand.letting go of the handlebars to return the salute. No matter what, books and an officer would go flying. After a day or two of this, the bruised survivors would stop returning the salute. Then, two weeks later, another officer group would class up..
  13. Telling cub scout tour groups that are afraid of being underwater just how long ago we went below the waterline. They used to LOVE tours on the sub. Really. Great fun. Lots of intelligent questions. Until we got to the bilge. That, we'd point, is the bottom of the sub. And that part's underwater? they'd ask nervously. Ah, hell, remember that first ladder you came down? Well, once you got to the bottom, your feet were under water. Shoot. It's my job to LIVE 400 feet down. Why should 25 feet of water bother you?
  14. The 2x4 of Knowledge Not allowed to hit the junior personnel any more. Hell, half my motivation for learning was the guy holding a piece of lumber over my head waiting for me to get it wrong...
  15. The Cone of Knowledge. In a similar vein, if slightly less violent, the cone of a fire extinguisher was fitted with a handle. During a checkout or other interview, if the trainee made a mistake, the cone was used much as a bullhorn to convey the correct answer to the individual. Usually starting with the word "WROOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!" Not allowed to try to break newbie's ear drums anymore.
  16. Ordering the following items through the Navy Supply System: crew-served weapons, flame throwing tanks, a clue, liberty, laboratory grade cocaine, a gross of ugly sticks, Hooters take-out, inflatable dates, marital aids and a bottle of relative bearing grease. It's one of those initiation standards to have the new guy try to get a bottle of relative bearing grease, like a bucket of steam or a left-handed monkey wrench. Bearing refers to the direction pointing to a contact, relative bearings are directions based on where own ship is headed. But some wag put "GREASE, BEARING, RELATIVE" in the supply system. I managed to order it. The Chief was ecstatic, in that he could then show everyone that he had a bottle of RBG. He was less happy to find I'd spent $45 of divisional funding for an ounce of the damned thing. My justification for the flame throwing tank was to mount it before the sail and on foggy days, we'd just flame our way through the mists. Wasn't approved for some reason.
  17. Pretty much anything I ever did to a midshipman. This could almost be a page of its own. The Academy used to teach the middies that 'enlisted men are stupid, but they are sly and devious and bear considerable watching.' Many see it as self evident that if I had been smart enough or dedicated enough to be an officer, I would have been. I responded poorly enough to such snobbery from actual officers. Taking the attitude from anyone in the pipeline to someday become an officer was not in the cards. Maybe I can give you a hint of what I mean. I've teased, tormented, taped, tied, tackled and taunted midshippmen that rode the various commands I've been attached to. Some took it well, some didn't. But the one that was the absolutely most offended by my attitude? Never laid a hand on him. I was reading in the lounge. Two middies entered with a video tape. They said they wanted to watch it. Sure, fine, that's what the entertainment system's for. Be my guest. They asked if I was going to leave. I THOUGHT it was because they wanted to turn off the lights to watch the movie and I wouldn't be able to read in the dark. I said I'd just use the reading lamp in the back. I'd done it before, there isn't enough light to bother anyone watching the TV. Turns out, though, the lights weren't the problem. They wanted the enlisted man to leave so that they could watch a movie. Because if middies were watching the tape, it became the middies' lounge and I wasn't welcome. I laughed and went back to my reading. He went and told the captain on me. In this one case, I wasn't yelled at for mistreated the middies. I thought it more than justified everything else I ever did, but there are those that disagreed.
  18. So, Telling the chaplain for the Naval Academy that you cheer for the Army team (and anyone else that beats up midshipmen). was another of my sins based on a deep and abiding distrust of the snobbish bastards. Probably shouldn't have mentioned it at the Superbowl party thrown by the chaplain of the church where my wife sang in the choir. He was an Academy Grad, and had been the Academy chaplain a time or two. Half of the people in the room were Academy officers. The guy next to me had just been selected to attend. I went and washed dishes for a while.
  19. Using 'stultifying' in a training critique What I said was that THIS lecture was better than the usual, formulaic, stultifying stuff put out on a regular basis as part of divisional training. I was warned about trying to be 'cute' by using a thesaurus to write critiques. Luckily, I'd been aboard long enough for three people to stand up for me and say it was the sort of word I'd know without having to look it up.
  20. Playing 'Train Crossing' during wakeups If you can find a shipmate sleeping on his back in the bunk: One man holds a large lantern over his knees and (at the right moment) makes the sound of a train whistle; one man stands near his head and (at the right moment) makes the sound of a train crossing bell; one man leans next to his ear and, signalling that it's the right moment, shouts "LOOK OUT FOR THE TRAIN!" The guy's eyes open, he sees a train headlight in the darkness, hears the whistle and the crossing.99 times out of 100, he sits up straight in bed with a scream. Submarine bunks don't have the room to allow this though. The sign of success was when the guy had grooves from the reading light cover in his forehead an hour later..


Return to the Big Index

Skippy Central.

Return to Things Skippy the bubblehead cannot do archive.


Any suggestions for improvement, or Skippisms to include, tell me Here.