In the Navy we call them Sea Stories, Do you have a good one to share?

Being an Army Aviator, most of my stories start with..."There I was, no sh**." lol

But, when my deployment to a Central American country was winding down, the new unit was arriving and each of pilots had to take accomplish orientation flight training. There were 2 aviators that were somewhat reluctant to fly when it was time for their night training. They would pre-flight an aircraft, find something wrong, turn-down the aircraft and then cancel the training for the night. This happened 3 nights in a row.

Being the Standardization Instructor Pilot and the Senior Warrant Officer of the outgoing unit, my commander and the incoming commander (whom I had served under in a previous command) called me into the office and we had a discussion on how to best handle the issue. We felt, that at this point, to keep it amongst us Warrant Officers.

So, after the meeting, I talked to our maintenance section and arranged for a crew to be at the hanger that night. The 2 aviators arrived that night and I met them and told them that I would be accompanying them tonight on their training. They pre-flighted their assigned aircraft for the night and they came up with something they thought was not within specs. They turned down the aircraft and they started to leave. I told them that there was a "2nd-Up" aircraft that they would now use. They then came up with something else they thought would Red X that aircraft. They again started to leave. That's when I pulled them aside, outside of everyone else's ears and explained to them that unless they had a medical problem or weather issue, they were going to fly tonight. I told them that we have a maintenance crew here tonight that, as we speak, are correcting any issues that you had with the first and second aircraft. I told them that if they would like, they can pre-flight all 15 of our aircraft if that would make them happy but come hell or high water, we are conducting training tonight.

Oh, they were not happy but they got the message, we were going to conduct flight training that night. And we did.

The meeting that they had the next day with their Senior Warrant and myself was also not a happy event for them.

Geez I have too many of these. Driving a cop car.
So this isn't specifically a sea story, it happened on north island, in Coronado. Im at my favorite bar getting pretty soused. A few stools down is a group of off duty cops from another state in town for a convention. They too are pretty pickled at this point. Near closing time they get up to leave just as I hit the door, the leader of their group quickly stops me to ask directions to the bridge, the direct path between Coronado Ann's San Diego. I try to give directions, but they aren't landing, so one if the cops asks me to simply drive them to the main gate of my base as nas north islands main gate is on the road to the bridge. I don't have a car at this point, and wasn't planning in driving, hence the whole I'm drunk now bit of the story. The cops pretty much in unison answer, yeah so, and convince me to drive them. As we proceed outside, I'm thinking I'm about to drive a regular car, instead I see a standard marked black and white cop car. Challenge accepted. We get in, I commence the very short drive from orange Avenue to the main gate. We're about two blocks into the trip, it's nearly 2am, and the cop in the front passenger seat reaches over and I'm suddenly driving a cop car with its lights and siren going. One of the guys in the back seat yells out "floor it!, you drive like an old woman! " so I speed up. Anyway, we make it to the main gate, I get them pointed to the bridge and wish them well. As I'm walking to the pedestrian gate, the guard is laughing his ass off, realizing what was so humorous about a drunk sailor driving some drunk cops around Coronado island, I too begin to laugh. Wouldn't do it today, but young and dumb, and pretty funny.

Ok another one... fun with fedlog. In aimd we had a pc with several cdroms. These are the federal logistics program cds, they contain a catalog of nearly every mil spec numbered item in existence. We use it to locate mill spec numbers for components so we can tell the nalcomis system what part number needs to be ordered. At this point 1994, there is no connection between nalcomis and fed log. To enter a new part into nalcomis you have to fill out a form with the data from fed log...I think you can see where this is going. One day it dawns on us that the people entering the nalcomis data have no idea what the actual item is we are calling a transistor, ic, capacitor, etc.

We test out our theory one day when we locate the mil spec number for beef jerky. One transistor order later and bam a 25lb box of beef jerky is deliver to the shop. It's on now. We start looking for interesting stuff, one guy orders a walking cane, another orders a loud speaker system. Each arrive and laughs are had by all, until one day, i believe it was vf-31, lost an f-14d doing a high speed fly by. (You can actually watch this happen because the discovery channel was filming fortress at sea on our ship the USS Carl Vinson) someone decides to be a smart ass and looks up the mil spec number for a complete f-14d . Well it's entered, ordered, and a couple months later delivered. The division officer, the senior chief, the shop supervisor, and a couple other folks are called to the carpet. Turns out when you order $200 in jerked beef, no one really notices, but when you order a multi million dollar aircraft, well that's hard to miss. As things are known to do, everything rolled down hill. By the third day after the delivery, every one of us was standing at attention recieving a pretty good dressing down by the chain of command. It was very difficult to keep a straight face during this scolding. Standing at attention in the hanger bay, the division officer (an ensign with peach fuzz if I recall correctly) was doing his best to sound intimidating. Unfortunately for him the offending "crate" was directly behind him.