What's the Dumbest thing you volunteered to do?

[GFC]

I spent about 7.5 years in the USAF during the Vietnam era but never went to Nam. I was stationed at Elmendorf AFB, Anchorage AK and worked on airborne electronics (Inertial Nav systems, Doppler Radar, etc.) I was on flight status which usually meant kicking back in a chopper as we flew down to Kodiak and back.

One day our commander walked into our electronics shop and said "I need a volunteer who is on flight status." Since I was the only one in the shop on flight status I raised my hand.

Naturally I was picked and THEN found out my job was to take a ride in the back seat of an RF-4C to ops check an inertial nav system that failed most times the jet went into a straight up climb then rolled over backward to pull out of the climb.

My flight as the GIB (Guy in Back) lasted about an hour during which time we did one Immelman Maneuver after another (Google it). About 45 minutes into the flight the system failed and that's what it took for me to be able to diagnose it and duplicate it on the test bench.

Dumb to volunteer? Yup. Exciting? Absofreakinlutely!

[TMyers17]

They didn’t give us much of a chance to volunteer when I was in the Marines. Usually, it was, “You, you and you, come with me.” Even if the task was bad, sometimes just seeing something different was worth it.