morganbj
Posts: 3634
Joined: 8/12/2007 From: Mosquito Bite, Texas Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Termite2 quote:
ORIGINAL: bjmorgan Reminds me of the time our Squadron XO came to watch a night range in grafenwoehr and walked up beteewen two tanks (M60A1s) so he could see better. Moron. The safety officer noticed it in time and yelled at him to back up, but the Major didn't hear him. A second later the two tanks fired, and I swear I saw him do a complete backflip before he landed face down in the mud. At the time, we thought he was injured (actually we hoped, if the truth be known), but afterwards we've laughed about this idiot for 35 or so years. I tell the complete story in an as yet unpublished manuscript I wrote several years ago. Maybe one day you can see it and several dozen other such stories in print. Than again, maybe not. I used to AI the M60's; I would sit on top of the turret and observe the crew, they would fire the main gun and the blast was just liking hitting you in the face, and the pressure on the eyeball was a little unnerving at first. After the first 20 or so rounds, it really didn't bother me anymore and I got used to the noise. Since I was almost directly behind the gun; after doing this for about 100 times, I could actually pick up the rounds in flight. Yeah, the AI's really had fun, didn't they? When not in my tank firing, I was in the tower sensing the rounds. Which reminds me of another story. I was OIC of a tank range for another battalion. They had a diminuative cpatain company commander I had been a field controller for for several army field tests (the old ARTEPs). He was a pompus little twerp. Well, one night one of my tank commanders and I were in the tower scoreing the runs and decided that when captain X came up to observe the firing after his run (it was Table VIII, the final qualification range), we'd pretend to be using some modified dice to do the scoring. My NCO had a pair that had "short right," "over left," "over," with almost no "targets". Well, sure enough after el capitanos run the tower door opend up and I glanced behind me to see this liitle short guy standing there, so after each round we started rolling the dice. "Short right," then "Over," then "doubtful left," and so forth. Of course we were sensing the rounds correctly for the official score. After a few minutes I heard a the guy behind us say, "that's pretty funny captain," and as I turned around I noticed the two stars on the guys helmet, "I hope you're actually putting down the correct scores." OUr commanding general was also about 5 feet 6. I had to leave before the next tank went downrange to change my drawers.
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