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The 13 funniest memes for the week of July 13th
It looks like the World Cup isn't coming home to England. Such a shame to see the championship match of the sport you claim to have invented go to literally everyone else. Seeing as an estimated seven people from the United States give a damn about the World Cup — give or take six people — we're finding it hard to care.
Meanwhile, American troops are about to do some dumb sh*t this weekend. Not for any particular reason — just that it's a payday weekend and it's Friday the 13th. Remember, if your weekend doesn't involve you making the blotter and having your First Sergeant busting your drunk ass out of the MP station, did you really have a weekend?
No matter what you've got planned, enjoy these memes first.
George Washington desperately wanted to be a British officer
Yes, the same George Washington that handed some of England's top officers their worst defeats had previously traveled hundreds of miles just to beg to be a member of their party.
American Gen. George Washington, the hero of the Revolution and the country's first president, spent much of his early career wishing he was a British officer, working as an unpaid aide, and then traveling approximately 450 miles just to earn his "Lobsterback" coat.
The 13 funniest military memes for the week of July 20th
Female sailors seem to be getting the hair regulations loosened to allow a more natural look. This (obviously) caused a gigantic backlash among male soldiers demanding the permitting of beards. Honestly, it doesn't really make sense to disallow sailors to grow beards in the first place. After all, naval history tied to glorious beards, in both the U.S. Navy and around the world. As long as they keep their beards groomed, it'd be a boost to morale and it'd cut out the crappy rush to shave each morning.
But we'll see. 7th Fleet will probably crash another ship into a civilian fishing vessel and blame it on sailors having beards instead of actually taking responsibility for it.
Anyways. Have some memes, you glorious bastards.
This is Russia's improved airborne infantry fighting vehicle
Armored vehicles, like cars, get a makeover from time to time. Improved versions emerge, often as operational experiences and new technologies are assessed. One big proponent of this iterative process is Russia, which pays special attention to its infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers.
For instance, let's look at the BMD series of airborne infantry fighting vehicles. These vehicles are intended to back up paratroopers with some heavy firepower. The original BMD, the BMD-1, was a hybrid between a light tank and an armored personnel carrier. And, just as they did with as the the BMP, the Russians made wholesale improvements to the BMD with each new iteration.
What happened aboard the Carl Vinson during Bin Laden's burial at sea
The dreaded announcement came through the 1MC: River City. If being deployed in the middle of the ocean isn't bad enough, try being deployed in the middle of the ocean with no comms.
The unfamiliar sound of a V-22 Osprey overpowered the sound of normal flight operations. The updates kept rolling through; starting from the flight deck down to the hangar bays, everything is secured. The rumors start to flow through the grapevine. You can hear the whispers and feel the electricity in the air. Nobody has any information, but everyone knows.
We got him.
The airman who inspired 'Good Morning Vietnam' just died at 79
Even though Robin Williams' now-famous morning greeting doesn't make people think of the real Adrian Cronauer, it does a pretty good job of representing who Cronauer was at heart. The former airman died at his Virginia home on July 18, 2018, after a long battle with illness.
While Cronauer's trademark, "Gooooooooood Morning, Vietnam" is really how the airman opened his show on the Armed Forces Vietnam Network during his time in Southeast Asia, he always insisted Williams' performance in the movie was more Robin Williams than Adrian Cronauer. The film is just loosely based on Cronauer's account of his deployment, with a few striking similarities.
Cronauer and Williams.
That time Russia tried to join NATO
NATO, as we know it today, is a de facto bulwark against Russian (née Soviet) expansionism into Western Europe and potentially elsewhere. It must have come as a complete surprise when France, Great Britain, and the United States all received letters of intent from the Soviet Foreign Ministry about joining the alliance.
Against themselves.
Originally a political alliance in Western Europe when it was formed in 1949, NATO became a solid military alliance as well when the Korean War made the idea of Communist expansion by force all too real. The same year the Soviets detonated their first nuclear weapon, the West formed an alliance to neutralize that threat. But before the Soviet-dominated countries of Eastern Europe formed the Eastern Bloc in 1955, Russia made an attempt to join NATO.
How the Navy tried to prevent accidents 60 years ago
For a long time, the Navy has been trying to reduce the frequency of accidents — and it's easy to see why. The recent collisions involving the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS John S. McCain (DDG 56) and USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) left 17 sailors dead, many others hurt, and both destroyers out of action for months. Other safety mishaps have been less costly, but each accident takes time and effort to clean up — ultimately taking time and effort away from other, more important things, like fighting the enemy.
For years, the Navy put forth the Friday Funnies, which used humor (most of the time) to push sailors to be careful, often using the sailors involved in accidents and mishaps as the butt of the joke pour encourager les autres — to help others learn from their mistakes. If you didn't want to be made fun of in the bulletin, well, you knew what not to do.
This vet crash-landed a 767 on a go-kart track on family day
The passenger-filled plane ran out of fuel thanks to a math error by ground and flight crew, forcing the pilot and first officer to figure out how to land a plane with no hydraulics and no engine power at a landing strip that he would later learn had been closed and converted to a go-kart track.
Air Canada Flight 143 was supposed to be routine. The crew took possession of their airplane from the departing crew, reloaded on fuel, grabbed the passengers, and headed out of Montreal bound for Edmonton at 41,000 feet.
But then they got a fuel pressure warning. "No big deal," they may have thought. Pumps fail all the time and gravity can feed these engines, "turn off the alarm." But then a second one went off. What they would later learn was that the ground crew had entered their fuel measurement using formulas for pounds — but the systems had been converted to work with kilograms.
Shortly after dinner service, the plane ran out of gas.
