Being a “NUB” or “boot” in the Navy usually involves a fair amount of pride swallowing and large doses of embarrassment. Old salts get their jollies by giving their fresh-caught shipmates impossible or fallacious tasks. Here are 13 fools’ errands unsuspecting sailors receive on their way toward becoming fleet players:
1. “Go ask Boats for a boatswain’s punch.”
‘Boats’ is short for boatswain’s mate. If you ask him for a punch, Boats will gladly oblige.
2. “Go to HAZMAT and get me some bulkhead remover.”
A bulkhead is a ship’s wall, and it would take a lot of elbow grease to remove it.
3. “Go down to the ship’s store and get me some batteries for the sound-powered phone.”
Sound-powered phones are… wait for it… powered by sound. No batteries required.
4. “Go get me the keys to the airplane.”
Silly newbie: Navy planes don’t have keys. Starting a plane involves flicking switches and moving throttles.
5. “Go bring me a bucket of prop wash.”
There’s practically a chemical or special product for every job, so this doesn’t seem like an odd request until you realize that prop wash is the water turbulence created by the ship’s propeller.
6. “Go get 20 feet of chow line.”
This one also sounds reasonable. After all, every piece of rope in the Navy has a name: mooring line, heaving line, tie line, etc. Chow line seems logical until you figure out it’s the line coming out of the galley.
7. “Go get me 10 feet of shoreline.”
A variation of the task above. You want shoreline? Wait for liberty call.
8. “Go ask the yeoman for an ‘ID-10-T’ chit.”
Write it down and see what you get. Yeomen describe newbies asking for this chit as if it were Christmas at sea — a gift filled with laughter (and pointing).
9. “Go get me some portable pad eyes.”
Pad eyes are permanent fixtures on the flight deck to which aircraft tie-downs attach. They’re anything but portable.
10. “Go turn on the cooling water for the handrails.”
Searching for this imaginary valve can take all day. The bulkheads and overhead have miles of pipes and wiring. An unsuspecting sailor can go from one end of the ship to the other without success. Hilarity ensues.
11. “Go ask the supply chief for a can of A1R or A.I.R.”
Smart newbies will offer up an empty can, but history shows there aren’t that many smart newbies.
12. “Go get some hangers and tin foil, we need to calibrate the radar.”
Dress the newbie in tin foil with a matching hat and gloves, and ask him or her to move slowly to get a good signal. Be sure to bring a camera; the Tin Man makes for great pictures.
13. “Go practice some touch-and-goes in the ship’s flight simulator.”
This one is usually reserved for new aviators. There are no flight simulators on the ship; the ship is where aviators actually fly.
OR: See what life is like on a U.S. Navy Carrier:
