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Aeronautical Jokes
During the "blitz" on London, an RAF officer walked into a bar during a raid. A bomb fell on the place, flattening it completely. After being extracted from the wreckage, one of the patrons asked the newcomer, "I say old boy, did you have to slam the door so hard?" A tough sergeant was drilling a bunch of new recruits. They weren't very good, and couldn't obey a single command. At last the sergeant's patience gave out and he yelled "At Ease!". He walked up and down in front of them and told them a story: "One day, when I was a kid, our house burned down. I had a lot of wooden toy soldiers, and they were all burned up in the fire. I cried. My mother told me not to cry, because some day I could have some more wooden soldiers. Now, thirty years later, I have them!" Condition: A Brewster Buffalo from USS Lexington lands badly on USS Saratoga with gaping holes all over wings, tail and fuselage. A pal of its pilot asks, "Have you got rats at your place? You should get some cats!" The Buffalo pilots says soberly, "The rats that did this had red spots on their wings, and it'll take Hellcats to stop 'em!" Translation: "Red spots" denotes Japanese national markings, so the pilot means he's been fighting. The Buffalo was rather obsolete by World War II, so he was lucky to get away with his skin intact. Hellcats were the USN fighter that really won the Pacific War, with a kill-to-loss ratio of over 19:1. Therefore the closing statement means, "Here's to our replacements when we can get those Japs!". A tough Sergeant roughly shook a new recruit for an early 10 mile march with the words, "It's 3:30!". Further down the line a reply came, "3:30! Get to bed, Sarge! We've got a big day ahead of us tomorrow!" "What happens if the brolly doesn't open" asked a new student to the
jump school. Two Hawks (birds, not Lead-In Fighters) are sitting in their nests when an F/A-18 flies over on full afterburner. "Wow, what speed!" says one. The reply comes, "You'd fly that fast too, if your tail was on fire!" Over aircraft radio frequency came this rather unusual SOS call: "Mayday,
mayday, starboard engine on fire!" "Did you know that the Russians keep a standing army of over 200,000
men?" Overheard: "On my first flight, I got rather nervous when the captain asked me if I knew the way to get to the flight deck..." An old lady, just before flying for the first time, insisted on seeing the
Captain. "You will bring me back down safely, won't you?" On a flight from Madrid to Rome the usual welcoming announcement finished, "Please pray for clear weather, as the planes in Spain fall mainly in the rains!" The Russians have put into service a new kind of nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine. It can surface, fire its missiles, and resubmerge in 22 seconds. We must take off our hats to the Russians, especially those left standing on the deck. "What happens if the parachute doesn't open?" Position: XXXXXXXXXX (Removed by censors), North-Western Pacific Ocean. Date: XX/XX/1943. An F4U Corsair, with numerous marks of battle through the rear fuselage and tail section, lands on a carrier. The pilot, with the light of battle in his eye, rushes up to the skipper's cabin while pulling off his life jacket and says, "Wow, what a day I've had, skip! Sunk a Jap carrier, shot down five Zeros, left a Jap Battleship listing heavily, and didn't even get a scratch on myself!". By this time he has got his life jacket off and tossed it into a corner. The captain says, "Velly good, Yank, but you make one gleat big mistake..." Overheard: "No, I don't like to travel by air. It's terra firma for me. The more firma, the less terra!" Before an early Qantas flight in a D.H.50: "Captain, what happens if the
engine fails?" The 747SPs owned by this particular airline had been maintained pretty badly. On one flight, the passengers heard this disconcerting report over the PA system: "Passengers, one of our engines has failed due to metal fatigue. There is no danger to us whatsoever, but with the lessening of speed we will fall one hour behind schedule." After another ten minutes came this announcement: "This is your captain. I'm sorry to announce that another of our engines has failed. We are returning to our destination, and will be two hours late." Another engine conked in similar circumstances. When the panic-free message came "... Er, our last engine has stopped..." one passenger said to another, "Great! Now we'll NEVER get down! ..." A sailplane (the proper name for a glider) pilot wanted a nice long flight, for which he needed a lot of rising hot air - or thermals as they are called. He knew that seagulls somehow know where they are, and decided to follow them wherever they went. Eventually, he found himself slowly descending in wide spirals over the rubbish tip... "... For three seconds he fell like a stone. Then exploded into a white circle and fell like a stone with a parachute..."
"... and if there's any turbulence, just remember that the bumps are made of air..." As all international flyers know, the Boeing 747 has an upper and lower deck. What some people don't know is that the old Boeing 377 Stratoliner (a civilian development of the wartime B-29 Superfortress) was similarly configured, with two full-length passenger decks besides the baggage hold. One passenger, with an artificial eye, walked to the stairwell of a B.377 and bounced his rubber eye up to the other deck, caught it and replaced it in his face. When asked the reason for this unusual act, he replied, "I did it to see if there was more room on that deck!" "How's the Charter plane business?" "You have progressed rapidly with your training. Congratulations! Tomorrow you can fly solo!" To which the rather dense pupil replied "... how low?" Sergeant: "Are you happy now that you're in the Army?" An Iraqi Mirage F1 pilot's version of the Lord's Prayer: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Eagles..."
Q. How often do twin-engined cargo aircraft crash? New Trainee Sergeant Pilot: "Er... Sir, I think my engine might be
flooded..." America and China were at war (A purely imaginary clash just for the context of
this joke) and the delegations met in Geneva for a cease-fire. The American
ambassador said to the Chinese, "You must sign this cease-fire. How can you
win? We have all the technology, aircraft, bombs, guided missiles, and all you
have are pea-shooters for your infantry!", to which the Chinaman said,
"Ah, but we can put 10,000 men on battlefield!" School teacher: "Johnnie, in 1939 Germany conquered Poland, they conquered
Austria, they conquered Hungary, they conquered Czechoslovakia, they conquered
France, and they conquered the Netherlands. Why didn't they conquer
Britain?" School teacher: "Johnnie, what were the Poles doing in Russia in
1940?" Q. Why couldn't the F-16
viper nose?
A boy was walking an ill-kept woebegone donkey, laden with rubbish to take to
the heap, past an Army barracks in some foreign land. The guys on the grounds
thought they'd give him a hard time and said, "Hey, boy, you're keeping a
good hold of your brother, aren't you?" If you do your low aerobatics carelessly, your aircraft might last you your lifetime! An idiot Infantryman was telling of his trials during the war. "A bullet
went into my chest and came out my back!" Sergeant: "What steps would you take if an enemy soldier approached you
with a fixed bayonet?" Lecturer: "Suppose your radar shows a section of enemy Flankers
at your 3 o'clock. What do you do?" A businessman in London hailed a taxi to Waterloo. "The station, sir?" asked the driver, to which the rather reproachful reply was, "Bit late for the battle, don't you think?" After the artillery barrage that opened the Battle of El Alemein, a Seargent-Major was surprised to see one gun crew still shouting orders. "Depress" and the guns were lowered. "Load" and an object was put into the muzzle. "Elevate" and the guns were raised. "Unload" and the object was removed from the breech (where it had fallen due to the angle of the barrel). Curious to say the least, he walked over for a better look. The objects were mess tins, and inside were cold dinners. The barrels were still exremely hot from firing and heated the meals perfectly. A bomber pilot noticed the shocking state inside the hangar where his mount was
kept, and had a few words with the senior mechanic of the squadron. "That
hangar isn't fit for pigs!" Translation: The F-111C/G bombers of the RAAF are known to their crews as "Pigs" because of the long snout and closeness to the ground. A video about the F-111s takes advantage of this in its title: "Pigs DO Fly!" Winston Churchill described a new battleship imported from America as "cheap and nasty", but realising the presence of the American Ambassador, he quickly ad libbed, "Cheap to our Navy and nasty to the Germans'" A new pilot was bragging about his mount: "The airbrakes are so big, when I
open them right out, the paint slides off the wings!" A Texan, an Alaskan and an Aussie were bragging about the size of their
respective cargo planes. The Texan said, "My plane's so big, it can carry
two footy teams and over 20,000 fans!" Tough Seargeant: "Where are those camouflaged jeeps?" Below are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by USAF pilots and the replies from the ground crews.
At air shows, Air Force people get very tired of civvies making dumb comments. At an RAF show, an old gentleman observed a Lancaster flying past low and slow, and then again with only three engines operative, then with two and then on only one. He said to a nearby serviceman, "That must be very difficult for the pilot", to which the quick reply was, "Just wait for the next. He only uses his windscreen wipers..." Young trainee pilots are renowned for their flagrant disobedience of the rule about no low flying. One topped a tree with his wing tip by mistake, but could still fly back to base. He explained the damage by blaming birdstrike. His CO showed him a selection of branches taken from his wing, and he explained, "Well, sir, the bird was in a tree!" A Tiger Moth on final approach was asked by the Tower, "Have you three greens", meaning "Is your undercarriage down and locked". Tiger Moths have a very simple fixed tailwheel undercarriage, so he replied, "Undercarriage down and welded, ready for landing..." A Halifax was in trouble over the Ruhr, with a dozen searchlights that he couldn't shake off. He repeatedly performed tight diving turns to port, and after five of these the lights all went out, as if by a master switch, Tail gunner says, "Great, skipper! How'd you do that?" "Well, they're all on a right hand thread..." Two golfers were playing near an airport, and one drives the ball high up into the air, hits a Jumbo that was just landing in the belly without damaging it, the ball drops straight into the hole. His friend says "Wow! That's great! How do you do that???..." "Well, you gotta know the airline's timetable, that's all!" After the D-Day invasion on the 6th of June 1944, pilots would fly strike missions at very low level. To counter the claim of one pilot, "it's a nuisance to have to climb over snails in Holland", others said things like "I flew looking out the periscope", "We were almost torpedoed by a U-Boat" or "We went so low our Airspeed Indicator measured in knots". The last was ruined half way through the war when the RAF adopted knots as the standard! Anti-submarine patrols can be gruellingly boring. One navigator suddenly required with skipper to "Turn right 90 degrees", which the pilot, of course, did. After about ten minutes he was asked to turn left, then left after a similar length of time, then right. The skipper demanded explanation, so the navigator said, "We were headed for my coffee cup on the map, so I thought we'd fly around it!" "The Japs are coming as thick as peas, sir!" "Well, shell them you idiot!" Passenger: "How high is this plane?" Translation: The passenger was talking about height from the wheels to the tip of the tail when that aircraft is on the ground, and the flight attendant answered about altitude in flight. Officer: "Soldier, do you have change for a dollar?" At a military funeral, a volley was fired as a salute to the fallen soldier. In the excitement, an old woman fainted. A small boy exclaimed, "Hey! They've shot grandma!" A pompous officer was tasting the soup made in the army kitchen. He called the
cook. "This is terrible! A raw beginner could do better!" The distance from the ticket counter to the plane is directly proportional to the weight of your luggage, and inversely proportional to the time before take-off. EXCERPT FROM RECENT FAA ACCIDENT REPORT
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