Of course, most of these stories will have to be taken with a pinch of salt, as they will have been embellished with repeated telling and of course the perpertrators and the witnesses were already suitably imbibed at the time, therefore the details of the event should be treated as suspect on recounting ("your honour!").
Also, some details are deliberately left out or misleading in order to protect the guilty - or innocent bystanders. (You decide!).
One such episode which I can mention with some authority, although if pressed will admit that it's just hearsay ("your honour") is regarding an event at a RAF training base in the 1980s where a Friday night Dining in was made a three line whip as such events were far from popular. The mess was a dreary place built in the 1960s and looking more like council offices rather than a place of fun and jolity, and most of the pilot students would much rather be on the road to somewhere better - going to shag their girlfriends. Add the fact that the Mess was shared with engineer students who ruled the roost and made the student pilot's life miserable with every chance they got - the pressed pilots were particualarly unhappy to be there that evening.
Also, it had been decided that for ''training purposes'' the Mess should have a student PMC and it was he who would preside over the Dinner. This student was an senior engineer student who was universallyunpopulor, even amongst his enginnering peers - and as the engineers hadn't been subject to the three line whip was presiding over majority of pissed off pilots.
Now some of us pilots (not saying who) had already planned the after dinner entertainment. The student PMC owned a classic British sports car which was his pride and joy. It was considered that it would be amusing to see his face when it was declared a "burner" and even funnier when the act was done. Now, these pilots had prepared for this jolly jape by going to a scrapyard and purchasing a similar car, hastily painting it in the correct colour so that at a distance in the dark, it would look like the PMCs. Unfortunately, the scheme was good in concept, but faulty in execution. The planners had failed to anticipate the emotion of the pilot mob after such a dreary dinner and as soon as the call to burn the PMCs car went up (after the loyal toast of course) the mob immeidately acted on the call - even before the speeches. The real car had been removed from the Pseudo PMC's parking slot outside the mess, but the replacement had not yet been parked. The mob headed for the car park, found the real car and burned it!
I went back to this station a few years later, as an instructor. The event was still mentioned, but in whispers and hushed tones, as apparently the Police case was still open!
