Q services.
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Awesome photo man!
Ken
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More like a shovel and a bucket. You’ll spend a lot of time in the wash rack after playing in the mud.
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On that same subject
NOT MY memory, I was told this by a colleague.
His role was to give the fire order for torpedoes aboard Swedish Spica class torpedo boat.
His job consisted of plugging his face into the rubber “face mask” over the radar screen on the torpedo console, track the target, aim the boat by giving course corrections and giving the fire order at the right moment. Since he will both hands busy and he will effectively be running the boat with voice commands he needs to set his microphone to constant transmit, he speaks and all others listen.
The practice target this day with choppy Baltic seas was one of our big icebreakers, torpedoe set to run deep with a strong lamp shining upwards which the crew on the target could then observe and confirm passage under the hull.
The torpedoboat was lying in ambush behind islands (also protected from most of the weather), my colleague was starting to “feel the sea” due to being deep inside the hull with his face over the radar screen.
Target approaches and the torpedoeboat starts to move out into choppier waters. My colleague realises that this might end with a mess so he gets himself and trash can and clamps it between his knees.
The sea gets worse and the the boat starts acting up, he hangs on, aligns the shot, orders Torpodoe Fire! and then relieves himself into the trash can, the microphone duly picks up the full sound track …
Afterwards one of the officers casually mentions that there had been a chain reaction all over the boat …
The Spica is the grey ship in this video, 40+ knots with gas turbines. The other boat is a later boat armed with RBS-15 anti-ship missiles (200 kg or 440 pounds of high explosives) instead of torpedoes though they could also carry torpedoes (two tubes forward in this video).
Time to re-energize an old thread.
In an above post, I mentioned my Texas team having a team house at Dallas Naval Air Station. We pretty did our own training, but often were required to show up at Ft. Carson to train with the company. Flying and driving individually could get to be expensive, so I came up with the briliant idae of signing out a government van from JRB Fort Worth. We drove up on a Friday, trained, and came back the following Monday.
When the dude in charge of the vehicles checked the odometer, we had put over 1700 miles on the van.
"What the hell? " He said. He was furious.
I told him we used it for training. You never asked me where.
Needless to say I never drew a van from that base ever again. My picture is still probably on a wall in there.
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one of my all time favorite events happened out at A102 near the Hiep Duc Ridge Line. We were shooting H&I’s on another of those 300+ round nights. We usually cross trained everybody during H&I’s as there was no need to hurry. We get a couple new kids in the section, and I start out teaching the two how to cut powder. Everything went well. We always start out with some low charge stuff directly into the ridge line where they often shot mortars and rockets from. For unless; it’s pretty much a direct fire deal, so the new guys just stand back and watch. Now we move on to the regular stuff, and we are shooting about half way to Laos. I’m loading with a new kid standing on the other side of the trails. He’s handing me powder, and we maybe shoot thirty or forty rounds over there at meaningless targets. Decide we need a break, and send the newbie for a couple beers. About twenty minutes later we’re back at it, and shift the gun to 4800 mils (roughly). We decide to put the new guys to work. One is on the rammer staff and swab, and the other is AGing. I tell the kid on the rammer staff that I’ll kill him if he hits my hand with the staff. I’m loading one right after another like a robot. Ten or fifteen rounds later we switch the kids around, and the kid on the rammer staff is now loading. He’s as nervous as a whore in church! We shoot five or six rounds and he’s doing just fine but about to piss his pants. We move to targets that are a few mills to the right, and the gunner is having an issue with the lights on the aiming stakes. I grab a hand full of batteries and go out there and change them. Randy walks over to the new kid and tells him to be careful how he picks up the projo as it’s not fun when it hits your big toe. We fumble around a minute or two, and then start shooting. Kid is really doing well although he looks like he has the DT’s on a Sunday morning. They put the other new guy on the swab and rammer staff, so now I got two to watch over. The kid grabs the powder and loads as if he’d done it a thousand times. Randy pulls the lanyard and there was a giant fireball out front. I knew right away what happened and was laughing. He forgot to load the projo! Field phone goes off asking what the was going on. Kid on the radio tells the he can’t see a thing, so there must not be anything (talk about night blindness!). We go back to shooting again and I got the new guy calmed down by telling him this happens all the time and don’t worry about it. About 4:30 in the morning it dawned on me that we’d have an extra round when the ammo section came around for the daily inventory. So Randy and I grab a round an go and hide it under a tarp on the roof of a bunker. We’re good to go, and we’ll simply shoot ten rounds on the next zone sweep (we were shooting several daily). Then it seemed like we quit shooting zone sweeps for a couple weeks! But we still got that extra round stashed away. Bingo we get a two round zone sweep (18 rounds) and we shoot 19 rounds. Randy and I get the extra round and put it in the ready rack. A sigh of relief is let out. Next morning Top comes by and says I see you finally got rid of that extra round!
Halloween came and we all got drunk. Streaked to whole base camp, and gathered up all the newbies and marched them around the camp naked. XO and the Chief of Smoke went nuts, and Top thought it was funny, so that was the end of that! The new guys were now welcomed into the land of nut jobs (like the rest of us). Both turned out well, and couldn’t wait for some new guys to show up.
gary
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I miss the nice Cool Autumn Mud of Graf this time of year. Ah the memories 
.
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Funnily enough it’s always this time of year that reminds me of exercises; whilst we often deployed in the searing heat of a German, or more rarely, a Brit summer, it’s those chilly days of Autumn that get to me.
Just a sniff of the potentially frosty air, and I’m transported back somewhere; there was always the background throbbing hum of the generators, and inside the HQ complex - sometimes just tents and Land Rovers, other times with AFVs - bright fluorescent lights, radio chatter and the clipped, patrician accents of the staff officers as they acknowledged radio messages or transmitted orders. Back then, a fug of tobacco smoke, the odd cloud of steam from a kettle as a brew was prepared, the clatter of typewriters, the more muted but faster rhythm: kerchunk-swish, kerchunk swish of the duplicators, as highly classified orders were prepared in the clerical cell. Telephones buzzing, the odd raised voice, not least amongst my clerks who would seemingly find any excuse to squabble.
And sometimes, a brief break outside the complex to breathe in the cold, tobacco-free air, or just to take five minutes with a brew of mud-like instant coffee (or that’s what it said on the jar), or tea, which seemed to taste much like the coffee. If there’d been a frost then the plastic scrim on the nets would crackle and sparkle with ice. Sometimes a brief exchange or some scatological comments from the Pioneer Corps sentry patrolling his beat along the barbed-wire.
A few more moments of reflection, then back into the fuggy, busy tentage for the remainder of a full 12-hour shift.
Sometimes a pressing interruption as the bellow of “Gas gas gas!” from the NBC SNCO cut through the complex immediately followed with the mad fumbling of respirators, and if we were not already wearing the protective suits, then the cursing and rustling amidst the tear of Velcro as we strove to protect ourselves. All then strangely quiet apart from officers vainly trying to mumble coherently over the radios or telephones.
Normally after a couple of hours we were declared chemical-agent free, which was a blessed relief. At other junctures someone would demand quiet, while the Commander’s Orders Group was underway, or the Col GS would announce “Command has now passed”, whereby our duplicate HQ some distance away would pick up the burden of commanding the battle. In the meantime, we would, in great haste feverishly pack up the HQ, stash stationery and equipment away in trailers, tear down the tentage and nets, and load it all either into the backs of vehicles, or lash it to the outside of canopies. A bit of stomping around in the frosty grass, some quiet chat, the revving of engines and the forming up of vehicles into “packets”, muted discussion, more cigarette smoke, blue and pungent in the crisp air, a sharp command, and we were off! Travelling probably some 20 miles or so distant, set up, repeat, and so on, for around 10 days.
More sinister announcements would inevitably occur, normally near the end of an exercise, such as “Gentlemen, SACEUR has authorized nuclear release” which, if one was not dropping with eye-itching fatigue, sometimes provoked no small sombre thought.
A mind-numbing fatigue, dirt, discomfort, even squalor all impacted and sometimes prevailed, and yet, and yet, I wouldn’t have changed it for the world!
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Nah, It is not wet or cold enough yet. November is Graf’s finest. I remember fondly of the canteen cup of instant coffee with coco powder, heated in the tank heater exhaust. There was that subtle hint of diesel that I just can’t find anywhere.
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I’d have swapped what I experienced on Operations or exercise for what you experienced any day.
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Thank you for your very elucidating comments.
Wedging a fork into the BV CB to stop it popping!
We were lucky, Chieftain had bags of power available to run all of the turret services so we never really had any issues with CB’s popping. Thank god for generator unit engines (APU’s for our non British brethren)
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The BV drew about 50 Amps I think, so for those of us without APUs, dealing with the BV CB tripping was an eternal struggle.
You’re welcome Shiny Arse 