This meme came out years ago, but every time I see it, I still laugh. What's more, I have no idea where or when the picture was taken, but the tank resembles a South African-modified Centurion, and the scenery in the background is very like parts of South Africa, so it might even be from my old stamping-grounds. Click the image for a larger view.
Ah . . . military memories! I'm sure most veterans, seeing that, will be laughing too.
Peter
7 comments:
I was walking down the pier the Main Brace at 32nd Street Navy Base and noticed a frigate was mooring alongside another frigate just as the sun was setting behind them. I could see though that the ship pierside had painted a giant target on their exhaust stack and that the frigate coming to moor alongside her had blown its Close-in-Weapon System apart and had a 76mm hole in the stack. It was another case of frigate shooting themselves. I'm not sure if they were the only self-liquidating class of warships but that class suffered a lot from the problem of returning an armed and ready-to-fire weapon to centerline safe-stow position.
It was humorous to see and was washed down with several pitchers of beer. There were severe repercussions from TPTB about the happy return and welcome the ship got.
That is funny as all get out to someone with a certain brand of humor (raises hand) but - one must suspect that the driver(s) wasn't(weren't) in a laughing frame of mind . . .
The rig was pulled over to the right shoulder, and the "OVER SIZE" bumper warning says not image-flipped. English-speaking, but presumably not left-hand drive, so likely closer to your new home than your old.
(Glad you're feeling at least a skosh better than that prime mover, though ;)
"Sarge, what does this button do?" "No, I didn't touch anything!"
ergg....
having our 81mm mortar gun line lay in the guns wrong and have the first ranging shot land 100 meters in front of the Forward observers bunker, more than several kilometers from the target. Oh a bunker that also held our Company commander who just happened to be be there to watch our first fire mission of that training exercise. When they called a frantic cease fire and the FDC behind our gun line got it and called it to the gun line, our "Idiot LT" who was relaying orders from the FDC to the gun line couldn't hear it correctly as he left both ear plugs in rather than just the one facing the gun line. He then proceed to holler as loud as he could "Repeat That" at the FDC. However "Repeat That" is a specific command for the last fire mission to be repeated. Us being the high speed low drag soldiers that we were, already had a round hanging in the barrel of gun number 1 ready to fire again if needed. The company commanders language and volume from miles away was educational in his reply to the FDC's radio call of Incoming. No one was hurt other than the platoon sergeant that laid in the gun line wrong and the LT that didn't know what he was doing.. The amount of skin on their asses that needed to grow back from the Company commanders discussion with them was legendary
The next one was a large combined arms exercise in fort Irwin California for some desert training. A battery of 155 artillery mislaid their gun line and dropped 4 rounds of 155 25 meters from our gun line. We had been listening to artillery go by overhead all morning. Loud whistle that dopplered in and then away from us overhead. These just kept getting louder and louder Everyone was trying to find places to go to ground and take cover.. however we were on a hill that was nothing but rocks on a flat place large enough to set up. From where we were setup maybe 10 meters from the end of the gun line was a slight rise and then the hill fell off with low slope for a hundred meters or so. all four rounds landed just enough over that rise on the reverse slope that we didn't take any shrapnel. Rocked our worlds and we got covered in a ton or so of dirt and rocks though. That was some pucker factor.
hehe.. sadly I have a few more stories like that... but will save them for another time.
What the heck happened to the tractor towing the tank ? Surely the tank was not loaded.
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