Those that know me, know that I’m a bit of a prankster.  I have my own definition of what qualifies as a prank and it might be a little different than the classic one.  I won’t do anything that’s mean/hurtful, that damages property, or could cause injury.  It has to be funny and I prefer it be as elaborate as possible.  I’ve done productions with professional actors, fake video conferences and transported large items across the country all for a good clean laugh.  But this little “hobby” started with an inspection back in the early nineties and it fell a little outside the box that has evolved since then.

 

Those who were in the Air Force back then will remember the great experiment of  putting C-130s in ACC.  ACC, or Air Combat Command, was born out of the reorganization of the Air Force after the cold war.  It is a combination of aircraft from SAC, bombers, and TAC, fighters.  AMC, or Air Mobility Command, is made of airlift aircraft.  Specifically, aircraft that deliver cargo and personnel either intertheater or intratheater.  To simplify, ACC drops bombs and shoots things, AMC delivers stuff.  The odd guys in the mix are the C-130s.

 

On the one hand, we’re the local delivery truck, moving cargo around a theater of operations.  We don’t have the long range capability to move large amounts across the oceans but we can land just about anywhere the Army needs stuff all the way up to the fight.  On the other hand, we airdrop troops and supplies right up to and past the front lines supporting troops engaged in direct combat.  This mission fits in with ACC, but hauling cargo fits right in with AMC.  This mission puts us in a position where, no matter which command you put us in, we end up being the bastard step-child.  So in the early eighties the rocket scientists at HQ AF decided we needed to be in ACC.  And actually, it kind of worked.

 

Our flying training schedule is more like a fighter schedule than an airlifters schedule.  We have to accomplish a lot of local flying to maintain currency in formation and airdrops and  fighter units almost exclusively do local flying.  However, when you mix easy going Herc crews, which include enlisted crewmembers, with A-type often egomaniacal fighter guys you can expect some, shall we say, conflict.  We knew it would be a one way street but in the reserves we were ok with that.  We knew that they would make a fighter pilot a wing commander in a C-130 unit, probably as a punishment for a minor infraction, but they would never make a C-130 pilot, let alone a navigator, the commander of a fighter wing.  We knew it wouldn’t last long, but active duty guys get promoted by coming up with boneheaded ideas that, for good reason, have never been tried before, so, as usual, we took the long view and worked through it.  That should be enough background for the non-Air Force among you.

 

On with the story.  It was time for our first major inspection, an ASEV or Aircrew Standardization Evaluation Visit.  Basically, Headquarters guys come in and inspect your flying program to include looking at all of your paperwork and records and then testing and administering flying evaluations to the crews.  It’s a big deal for flyers and if you’re not constantly staying ahead on the paperwork, preparing for it can be brutal.  Just our luck, we were the first Reserve wing to be inspected by our new ACC masters and we were more than a little nervous.  Since ACC had no C-130 expertise they had to go out and find a C-130 guy to help them administer the inspection.  The guy they came up with was a young major named Duke.  I know many of us know his last name, but in keeping with my new prank standards, I don’t need to mention it!

 

I felt kind of sorry for him.  I don’t think he was a blustery kind of guy but, once they pulled him into their world, he could either continue to be a C-130 guy or choose to bluster with the worlds best blusterers.  He chose the latter.  He felt he needed to establish some credibility so he proceeded to bust or downgrade pilots for ridiculous reasons.  In some cases for pilots following local procedures that he didn’t particularly like.  No amount of common sense or discussion would sway his, or the team chiefs, opinions so we just had to grin and bear it.  I remember a long discussion I had with the O-6 team chief where he kept pontificating about the importance of knowing and maintaining the C-130 cornering velocity during aerial engagements.  Really?!  (All non-flyers may skip the next sentence) As an Aerospace Engineer, I can appreciate the technical nuances of a discussion of L/D max, but in the speed range of a C-130 a 40 knot change in airspeed during an aerial engagement with a fighter is meaningless and once you go max power and pull at 60 and 2 you’re there without trying.  But I digress.

 

By the end of the inspection we were pretty fed up.  We passed with a respectable “Satisfactory”.  After a thorough tongue-lashing from Gen Smith for not getting an excellent, (he ate a donut in front of the camera as we were setting up for the video conference. I don’t think he knew the camera was on but it made the chewing out a lot more enjoyable (pun intended)) we decided some payback was in order.

 

With any prank, a small “circle of trust” is imperative so with a circle of two we hatched a plan.  My co-conspirator, let’s keep this anonymous and just call him Aldo, had secretly snapped a photo of Duke during the inspection and since Aldo had become somewhat of a early photoshop expert he created a graphic of Duke’s head with the classic red circle and diagonal over it with the caption “Don’t Be a Dukehead”.  We scraped together some money and he had, as I recall, 1,000 4”x4” stickers made.

 

If you’ve ever been in a military crew van, or a military base operations, you know that crews a tradition of putting up unit stickers wherever they can sneak one.  There are standard squadron patch stickers and then there are the more creative ones that sometimes become legendary.  We wanted this one to get the widest possible dissemination but we also wanted our careers to continue so I came up with a CYA plan.  If you don’t know what CYA stands for give it a little thought.  Some A’s need more C’s than others.

 

Peg and I were traveling down to Georgia to visit our friends Scott and Cindy that summer so I put together 10 manila envelopes with a dozen or so stickers in each one and had Peg address them to all of the Reserve C-130 units and some Guard units including my own.  She intentionally misspelled some of the names, including mine, and I mailed them from the post office in Marietta, Georgia.  All we had to do then was sit back and wait, and it didn’t take long.  Stickers started showing up across the C-130 world and beyond.  Crew vans, bathrooms, base ops, even the occasional urinal and ACC wasn’t happy.

 

Within a month all of the Ops Group Commanders received a letter from ACC demanding that the perpetrators of this prank be brought to justice and punished for sullying the reputation of this fine young major.  They would investigate and take “appropriate” action.  My boss, the OG, Col Zach Prescott, called me to his office and in the most serious tone he could muster he asked, “Do you know anything about these stickers?”.  My answer, “Yes, I do”.  And here’s where I learned to only give a simple answer.  If they want more they should ask.  “I got an envelope in the mail with a dozen or so stickers. Let me get them for you”.  I presented the envelope to him, pointed out the postmark from Marietta, which he found interesting, and excused myself.  Is it lying if you give half an answer?  He forwarded the results of his investigation to HQ and eventually the whole thing faded away.

 

Prologue:

Years later I did an ORI with Duke.  His career had not been damaged by being called a Dukehead and he got the message. His new unit heard a rumor that I might have some of the Dukehead stickers so they quietly came to me and asked if they could have 2 or 3.  They assured me that Duke just thought of it as a funny story and was actually proud of his fame.  I ran back to my office, came back with 2-3 hundred and handed them over with a wink and a smile.

 

“Don’t Be a Dukehead”