Amusing nonsense

[PAXboy]

I stumbled across this by chance and thought it fun. The TSA may not be amused. :cool:

Nice! - Album on Imgur (http://imgur.com/gallery/HZuQg)

[herman the crab]

Whatever you think of the TSA (and other government agencies), they're doing a job, whether you like it or not.

It does not however justify theft of government property, which is a federal offense (http://wklaw.wpengine.com/federal-state-crimes/) under 18 U.S.C. section 641.Albeit given the value would be a misdemeanor.

No longer such fun when it affects the rest of your life.

[DaveReidUK]

Besides, how would you ever travel by air again? You would have to put your tray inside another tray to get through security, and you'd never get it back. :O

[Rwy in Sight]

If I saw an security agent allowing a pax to take such a tray / basket / basin with him/her I would have serious doubt on the agent's ability to fulfill the job requirements.

[El Bunto]

I think the point is that the 'security' staff are so busy doing their process-defined busy-work that they didn't even notice the passenger taking the tray. Many eyes looking but none seeing, which doesn't inspire confidence.

[Basil]

When I was a 16yo apprentice engineer (Yes, I DO have a long memory) three apprentices decided they'd attempt to remove a blacksmith's anvil from the secret and secure MoD experimental establishment where we worked.
They made a halter, placed it around the neck of the strongest and suspended the anvil between his legs and hid it with a long coat.
The other two supported him past the MoD police guards, explaining that he'd taken ill and they were helping him home.
They were caught when they tried to return it :)

[Metro man]

I heard about a case of a ships propellor being stolen from a dockyard. It was massive and required a special truck. No one thought to question the perpetrators as obviously it must have been legit.

[Basil]

it must have been legit
And, shortly afterwards, liquid ;)

[Heathrow Harry]

IIRC it happened at Swan Hunter's on Tyneside - over an Easter weekend - maybe in the early 60's

In those far off days they had a line of propellors (all phosphor bronze) lined up on the dock side - this was well before just-in-time-delivery

Someone turned up with a low-loader and escort vehicle and all the paper-work saying it was to go to Clydeside and they even dug out the duty crane operator to move it......

it was 20-40 tons and worth a fortune ... and was never seen again

clearly an inside job and probably middle management but no oen was ever fingered for it...................

[RAT 5]

It happens every day. I saw a TV program, from CCTV, of a white van driving boldly into a builders yard, reverse unto a small road roller, out climb 2 suitable dressed navies who positioned a ramp at the back of there van and proceed to drive the roller up and inside and equally boldly drive out of there builders yard. Broad daylight, sheer cheek & bravado.
I would not be surprised how many 'white coats and neck stethoscopes' remove stuff from hospitals everyday. The list off bare-faced don't blink thieves must be huge.

[Paul Wilson]

Sometime in the 1980's at John Lewis in Oxford St., 2 chaps go into the carpet department and roll up a 12ft x 9ft Chinese rug, worth around £1000. Tape it up, then over the shoulders and down the escalator and out through the front doors.
I imagine any red faces of the perpetrators were disguised by the fact of hefting one of those things between 2, would in any case give them both red faces and sweaty brows!

[vctenderness]

Many, many moons ago I worked for the top security printing firm, Bradbury Wilkinson. They printed banknotes, stamps, travellers cheques and all financial instruments. As you can imagine it was a high security premises.

The chairman had his office redecorated over a bank holiday weekend and when he returned found that the valuable Persian rug which adorned his office had been stolen!

The rug was never found nor the culprits:ok:

[PAXboy]

There have been many reports of neighbours throught 'they must be moving' as the removals men emotied the entire house contents into their (suitably painted) removals van and drove off. When I worked in a department store, it was known that the amount of internal theft wa enormous. Much of it being tucked into legit shopping bags of friends by the counter assistant.

[Danny42C]

Heathrow Harry (#9),

My 130/#2588 (Pilot's Brevet),
...I recall a good story from Calcutta. There was a big munitions factory at Dum-Dum. They were losing a lot of stuff from pilfering; the guards on the gate spot- checked the offgoing shift; one chap was waddling along with difficulty, obviously in some discomfort. "What's the matter with you?"........"Elephantiasis of my scrotum" - (try putting that into Bengali !) - not uncommon there, it seemed.

They whipped off his dhoti, slung between his legs was the chuck off a lathe, weighing half a hundredweight ! (Off thread a bit, sorry, Mr Moderator)...

[S.o.S.]

Well, Danny 42C, the O/P [original poster] titled the thread Amusing nonsense and you posted just that! One might surmise that under the dhoti along with the chuck, he certainly had some kind of problem with his scrotum. But, as you correctly say, none of this has anything to do with aviation ... Tsk Tsk.

[strake]

Sometime in the 1980's at John Lewis in Oxford St., 2 chaps go into the carpet department and roll up a 12ft x 9ft Chinese rug, worth around £1000. Tape it up, then over the shoulders and down the escalator and out through the front doors.
I worked in the furnishing fabrics department of JL Oxford Street and we used to hear about that story. Only I was there in 1973 :)

[NRU74]

Does anyone remember the 1969 Daily Mail Transatlantic Air Race ? We Tankertrash operated out of Loring and Goose and refuelled the Navy F4 and the Harrier
A few months later there was a cocktail party to celebrate this at the Inigo Jones Banqueting Hall in Whitehall funded by the Navy. In this (free) pi$$ up was a large cake with a picture of a RN F4 and the cake was destined for Great Ormond St.
We decided to 'steal' it . We managed to get it out of the upstairs hall and go downstairs in the street until we were apprehended by RN Police on the door. I was then being b0llocked by the Sqn Cdr on how I'd let the RAF down etc etc when this Air Marshal (we were all in uniform) poked his nose in and said what a wizard wheeze this was to take it to the RAF Club and ransom it to the fishheads. With one bound I was free !!

[Trinity 09L]

Go into any timber, plumbers or builders yard on a Saturday morning up to the late 80's and the cash was never thru the till for "small" items or offcuts.

[PAXboy]

Great story NRU74! Your Sqn Cdr must have rather cheesed off that you got out of that one! Certainly the sight of an Air Marshal in full rig, splattering scrambled egg as he goes, is a site that stops ANYONE in the service. Come to that, many regular citizens too!

[Hartington]

The story about the carpet goes back even further.

My mother was a WREN in WW2. Towards the end of the war she was billeted in the Lord Warden Hotel in Dover which I gather had been upmarket before the war. One day men with clipboard walked in and took away the hall carpet which was in good condition.

[Fantome]

In Bob Hoover's book FOREVER FLYING . he tells of his POW days at the end of the war and how he and his mate thought they could get away in a He111 .
There were many such aircraft parked around a field in NE Germany so to pull off this one required only a short hop over to Sweden. Bob and old mate were out of their camp on a day labouring detail. The plan they hatched was to carry a long pole between them past the parked kraut aircraft having already earmarked their chosen one. They laid the pole carefully on the ground. No guards anywhere in sight. They got into the Heinkel . Bob had already some days or weeks before got hold of some pilot's notes. They had both engines primed and ready to try a start when a guard on his motorbike spotted them. He told the two Americans verboten get out of here and stay away from the aircrafts . . . ( Seem to remember there was an instance or two of escape by enemy aircraft )

[Heathrow Harry]

Know a company in Calgary that lost a load of IT kit one lunchtime to the man with the clipboard............................................

[jimtherev]

And Broadcasting House (BBC) in 1959 lost not one but three grand pianos in 1958-9. (three separate occasions)
Well, the nice men had clipboards with authentic repair orders and white coats with Steinway across the back. What could possibly be wrong with that?

[vctenderness]

I seem to remember back in the 80's or 90's a team of employees at BA were stealing Tristar APU's.

I don't remember all of the details (maybe someone else will) but it only came to light when BA bought a used APU and when they looked at the serial numbers realised it was one of theirs!

Beat that!

[Mr Mac]

I have worked in the construction industry all my life apart from a s short spell with RTR2 as a Rupert, so the list of lost kit is legendry. Personally my own biggest losses on a project were a Temporary Bridge (I was junior engineer so did not have to explain that one) and two Caterpillar Dozers on a different job which I did have to do the paper work for. The CATS turned up in Kuwait apparently some 12 months later on one of our projects, and we tried to have them impounded as stolen property, but anyone who has worked there will know the world does not work like that in that neck of the woods, but our accounts dept made a good stab at it before admitting defeat.
Fantome
There is a tale of 2nr Luftwaffe officers escaping from a POW camp in UK Lake District and stowed away on trains and got down to Suffolk where they purloined a small A/C to make good their escape, but when airborne found there was insufficient fuel . They landed and the British Home Guard came to the rescue thinking they had crashed. The two German officers made out they were Poles and that they were out of fuel. The HG turned the A/C around and dispatched one of their number for fuel. Unfortunately before he returned a regular soldier happened upon the scene recognised the German uniforms and the game was up for the two German officers, but not a bad stab at an escape.


Regards
Mr Mac

[RAT 5]

Bloke wanted some sand for his garden patio bedding. He saw a large pile of council sand at the end of a street in his village. Too good an opportunity to miss. In the middle of the night, complete with trailer, he drove to the pile and started uploading shovels full of sand. When he was half done and the trailer was half loaded, Mr. Plod strolled past and stopped. "ere ere, you can't be dumping sand here. Load it all back up again and be off with you."

[Heathrow Harry]

" only came to light when BA bought a used APU and when they looked at the serial numbers realised it was one of theirs"

ahh that old stores dodge - out the back-door and then buy it in again through the front.......

[RAT 5]

I wonder if BA did the same with the autoland on their L1011's? They paid money to have the standard kit removed at delivery, but then I suspect they paid again to have it retro-installed later on. To be corrected by retired insiders.

[Herod]

Then there were the Scottish students who stole the Stone of Scone (Scotland's historic throne, on which all Scottish monarchs have been crowned) from Westminster, back in the fifties. I believe they were rumbled when someone spotted it in their greenhouse, which just goes to prove that people who live in glass houses shouldn't stow thrones.

[old,not bold]

As a very junior Rupert in an RA Regiment in Hong Kong, I was responsible for a water trailer (£500, nearly 6 month's pay) which went missing while in my charge.

The Quartermaster was sympathetic, unusually, and on his next return of items "Beyond Economical Repair, Scrapped Locally" he included a Bottle, Water.

He waited for about 6 months to allow the paperwork to go through the system and into storage.

Then he sent a Correction to the return, ie "Item No nnnn/xxxx/nnnn/date - for Bottle, read Trailer". Weeks later, a bored depot clerk clipped that to the original return, and the QM struck the Trailer, Water from my inventory, just before the next Admin Inspection.

I'm sorry, Ma'am, but needs must.

[Heathrow Harry]

there's an old Sci-fi story about someone in Starfleet or similar doing that to an item they can't find but listed as "offog" - when the Admin Inspection is due they send in a routine message that the "offog" came apart under gravitational stress and was fed in to the engines........

It was a typo for "official dog".............. and the panic is universe wide...........

[Wageslave]

A mate of mine was involved in a Junglie E and E exercise and during his travels came across one of the adjudicator's Land Rovers unattended which he regarded as fair game and borrowed it to save him walking out of the exercise. In his return to wherever the finishing line was he passed several of the hunters who recognised the vehicle and waved him on. He just left the vehicle in a car park near the finishing point and ran the rest, not mentioning the Land Rover bit. The landie was not found as they weren't looking for it in carparks...
A helluva stink erupted when the vehicle was reported stolen and he had to fess up. The subsequent carpeting was only going to end badly as the brass (Marines I think) with pride piqued were out for blood having had their security and checking procedures so badly shown up by a mere Lt. pilot but his defence was that the exercise briefing was to use all initiative and legal means to evade capture and no mention was made of not borrowing a service vehicle that he was licenced to drive. He got away with it, just. The powers were furious.

[aerobelly]

there's an old Sci-fi story about someone in Starfleet or similar doing that to an item they can't find but listed as "offog" - when the Admin Inspection is due they send in a routine message that the "offog" came apart under gravitational stress and was fed in to the engines........

It was a typo for "official dog".............. and the panic is universe wide...........

"Allamagoosa" by Eric Frank Russell. Won a Hugo Award in 1955.

Good yarn.


'a

[Heathrow Harry]

Thanks! thats the one - with the Admiral of Checking Things (sorry - SpaceFleet Audit) who knows nothing but is a dab hand at ticking off checklists......................