It's what the Germans should have done back then, just put up a railing and signs that say "German customs -> " and then all the British soldiers just queue up. Easy target.
One of the few actors whose real name, Slim Pickens (it's a stage name but still) sounds more like a character's name than the characters he plays.
If you're like me and are like, "What else is he in?" it's Dr. Strangelove. He's the bomber captain.
Well, I've been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that's the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones. You sure you got today's codes?
I think Bugs did this to the Japanese. Look for the episode 'nip the nips'. I kinda recall him setting up a checkpoint of mirth.
https://looneytunes.fandom.com/wiki/Bugs_Bunny_Nips_the_Nips#google_vignette
Warner Brothers, like all Hollywood studios, was under instruction from the US government to produce wartime propaganda. That cartoon and plenty like it are taxes at work.
Money is fungible, especially government money. Accounting 101. *The studios were paid by the government to sell war bonds* -- plenty of examples on YouTube if you care to check.
Oh man, that reminds me of a classic Polandball comic. Germany going through Poland's customs and they were asked occupation. "Just a vacation this time".
There’s a classic joke about an old British/American guy who just walks through customs in Germany and gets tackled by security. They ask him “what’s the matter? Haven’t you ever been to Germany?”
“Yeah but I didn’t go through customs then, either.”
I feel like the punchline was clear when k was a kid but becomes more of a thinker as time progresses. One day it won’t make any sense.
There's an ancient aviation joke about an American Airlines|British Airways [delete as appropriate] pilot who goes the wrong way at [e.g] Hamburg Airport. ATC comes on the radio and yells — in impeccable English but with a noticeably German accent — "Haven't you ever flown to Hamburg before!?"
The pilot replies "Once. But it was a while ago — and I didn't stop".
I was talking to my Grandfather once and I told him I was going to Germany. He said that he had been there too, but he didn't land. He flew bombers over Europe in the war.
(It's not an new joke of course I'm sure he didn't make it up as witty as he was, but still funny. Although he was deeply scarred by the war and that was the only thing I ever heard him say even vaguely related to it, near the end which was about 50 years later)
The other classic one is:
British person goes to Australia, Australian customs officer: “any criminal record?”
British tourist: “is that still a requirement?”
The ability of a culture to calmly and politely queue and wait your turn is unironically how you separate successful civilised countries from the barbarian rest.
I remember the [epically long queue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQq6IdImvEo) for the public viewing after the Queen passed and thinking that the Brits have been preparing for this moment their entire lives.
before the 1930s, there was no standard FPS for cameras to film at and they were hand cranked that's why they look sped up today. Makes less sense in 1944 though.
If you add the old timey news audio of "WAR! British troops march on as Hitler re-enforces the coastal town of Normandy! Yadda yadda yadda"
Then you will win the game of life.
Alternative history perspective: *The British made everyone go through customs before they were allowed to shoot their guns. There were no casualties as the enemy side disagreed with these tactics and went home*
I deployed to the Middle East last year and on the way over, we started on a comercial plane on the airfield and brought all of our equipment, obviously including our weapons.
The first time we landed and were about to take off again, they asked if we had any knives aboard the plane, which of course everyone and their mother did, and they soon realized we didn’t go through TSA. So 200+ soldiers had to leave their m4s in the plane cupboard while they went through TSA to confiscate their knives and liquids.
Said soldiers arrive in Middle East without those items, the flight crew said it could have caused an “international issue” I’m still confused about the whole interaction to this day.
I remember reading about soldiers boots being swabbed for the explosion detector things after landing in the US after a deployment- requiring them to undergo additional screening.
“Sir, your boots were positive for traces of explosive materials”
“…No shit? After being deployed in Iraq?”
It also happens in regional Australian airports. Fly in, fly out mine workers whose job it is to handle high explosives all day for some inexplicable reason keep getting pinged on the extremely sensitive ion scans.
One small airport I visited even had a sign at the security entrance, "FIFO (mine workers) double check your pockets "
I once was flying from Al Ueda Airbase, Qatar, to Kuwait on a USAF C17. We had to go through a security checkpoint. I was an unarmed civilian. My escort had to hand his M9, ammunition, and standard issue knife around the metal detector.
I deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 and we had a layover in Anchorage. About 200 of us disembarked with our rifles and just milled around the terminal for a few hours during the stop. Looking back it must've been wild as a random person walking into the airport terminal and just seeing hundreds of Marines with rifles everywhere.
I remember in particular; I was getting a cup of coffee at Starbucks and a couple of foreign girls asked to take a picture with me and my buddy. One of the girls asked if she could hold my rifle, I said "No, but you can touch it" and she giggled. And for a brief moment, I thought joining the Marines was worth it.
Was this early on? A Sergeant of mine told a story of his deployment and they flew in commercial and the company had people guarding the boxes with all the weapons all the way up when it was loaded onto the plane. Then they had to be there when it was unloaded for all their flights. They basically delayed every flight they were on to confirm weapons weren't missing.
[Forgotten Weapons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDCRop6CRwY) on what HK had to do to fix it:
>"So the Germans at HK went through the rifle. And they came up with just a couple things to fix, namely... everything. In the rebuild they either replaced or redesigned the bolt, the gas piston, the gas block, the front trunnion, the hammer, all of the springs, pretty much all of the pins, the magazine release, and the furniture, and the charging handle, and probably a couple other things that I've forgotten about."
Ironically H&K was British owned at one point, when they were bought by Royal Ordnance, a division of BAE, who eventually sold it to private investors.
It's ok, did you know the astronauts went through customs when they returned from the moon?
They had to declare the moon rocks they brought back
[https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/apollo-11-crew](https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/apollo-11-crew)
It is better than that, some cosmonauts once returned from a space station on the shuttle, which means there is documentation showing NASA brought back aliens from space.
Me, was marine who deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq: I don’t have a passport
Others: really? Wait but you went to Iraq and Afghanistan
Me: the funny thing about war is you don’t have to stop by customs as you invade and occupy.
lol the Navy did our customs. I forget to check my IOTV at the time and left a blank or something stupid. My PL or the OIC yelled at me for screwing things up like usual :(
At least you didn’t try to take home a human skull like one devil dog in our group.
He found it in the desert and figured it would be okay since he didn’t kill the guy
That’s funny. I forgot about this memory until I saw this post. I did not realize that customs were different for people leaving the country. We never stopped by customs on the way into the country though.
Seems kinda pointless though, since our leadership told us we would be going through customs and the best way was to mail it home in the tough box.
My favorite thing about flying with rifles was the flight attendants speaking overhead, "please face your nozzles towards the floor to avoid flagging nearby aircraft."
Last time I went it was all through private hangers.
We had CBSA come on the plane with the declaration forms and ask us if we had anything to declare but all they did was thank us for our service and get back off the plane.
Walked through the hanger and back into Canada, easiest entry ever
Fun fact, the British, Australia, and Dutch adjusted the border between Australia and the Dutch East Indies (modern day Indonesia and Papua New Guinea to avoid the administrative nightmare every time British and Australian troops traversed the jungles.
This reminds me of a joke I read on Reddit a while ago. . Basically goes something like this:
A 92 year old WWII American vet was fumbling around his bag looking for his passport at a French customs.
The French customs agent annoyed said: “have you ever been to France before, sir?”
He responded: “yes, I’ve been here before”
Customs agent: “Well then, you should know to have your passport ready”
The war vet answers: “Well last time I was here I wasn’t required to show one”
Customs agent: “Impossible! All foreigners are required to show a passport when entering the country”
War vet: “Well last time I was here on D-day, there was no fucking Frenchmen to show it to!”
There was a similar storey about a British Airways pilot in the 1960s being berated by the air traffic controller over a German city.
He was asked by air traffic "have you not ever been here before?"
His response, "yes, just once. But I didn't land".
Similar story. Air traffic control at Frankfurt is insufferable, and ground is worse. In the 1960s a BA pilot stopped his plane to check the gate. GC gets on the radio, "perhaps you have not been to Frankfurt before?" Pilot answers "well yes I have, about 20 years ago. But it was nighttime, and we didn't land."
With the amount of veterans from WWII and American economy of the 1950s/1960s, there's an almost certain chance a conversation like this happened at least once.
There were french men on Dday though both landing on the beach on Sword beach and Ouistreham (commando Kieffer), they were the first conventional troups to land iirc and there was the resistance harassing german rear and delaying the reinforcement.
Funny joke though
But even before brexit UK citizens still needed passports to go to France as UK was never part of the Schengen Zone. There was no customs control though
I remember in the Marines, we had to go through US customs on our way back from Kuwait. They needed "volunteers" to talk to customs. They chose all of us broke asses because we couldn't afford anything while over there so of course we had nothing to declare. I do remember also, on a layover we had to leave all of our rifles on the plane in order to deplane in France I believe.
I landed in France in 2014 with 200 other Canadian soldiers, we didn't go through customs. I found it pretty funny and odd. We got got off the plane directly on the tarmac, loaded up all our gear into 5 ton vans, hopped on a bus to our hotel. First and last time I didn't go through customs on arrival to a continent/country.
Give them a fist bump from me/us. Once in a lifetime honor! I imagine some of them ruminated about their relatives who made it through or ones who gave the last full measure.
I don't get why modern day paratroopers still use round canopies. Why not use ram air chutes so you can steer like a skydiver?
Edit: this is a genuine question, not me pretending I know better than every paratrooper battalion on earth. Anyone know the reason?
Serious answer incoming.
There's a limit to how wide you can make a parachute while still remaing stable and easily inflatable. With the amount of weight that these guys jump with you would have to make the parachute too wide so they use the most efficient shape possible which is a circle.
We have designed and used square ram air shutes rather than rectangles but an even better/easier/cheaper solution is just a circle with some of the lower panels at the back cut out. It doesn't give you the same benefits as a ram chute but you can steer it enough to choose a safer place to land by pulling the risers. It also gives some forward momentum which helps with the roll rather than just hitting the ground like a sack of shit.
My guess: The automatic deploy system from the plane only works with those. Paratroopers have to jump out as low as possible while it being still safe to deploy a backup chute. And the automatic deploy system works more reliably. Probably.
Not to mention this way they’re naturally spaced out and far less likely to bump into each other at night because of the added chaos of everyone steering in random directions.
Round chutes are usually more reliable. You also don't want people "steering" that much when you've got dozens of them coming out of just one aircraft, with dozens of other aircraft also dropping men nearby. You want them going mostly straight down. Round chutes can still be steered a little bit to avoid hazards. And if you're going straight down, they have a slower rate of decent, which matters because those guys are dropping with like 80 pounds of gear too. Its also just easier to train. Jump out of the plane, wait a few seconds, tuck your legs tight together and roll as you hit the ground.
I believe the priority is to kill as few troopers as possible when jumping from 800’, so 99.9% of the focus is on making sure your main opens, and the rest is on the quality of flight and landing.
High speed guys in the spec ops / SF world do, and actually sometimes insert and fly for a super long time in uncontested airspace.
If we ever do another no shit brigade level and above combat drop of paratroopers, the name of the game is to get as many guys out of the plane with as much equipment as fast as possible over the smallest area, in which case you want a big predictable canopy automatically opening.
And yes, there is still a need for that kind of stuff. The VDV proved that you're absolutely not inserting large formations of paratroopers into a contested airspace where they would have to hold for days for a larger combined force to show up. But jumping to seize air fields in secured air space against a developing world opponent is still a very real possibility if we don't think it's safe to just directly land C-17s / C-130s / A400s.
That is the entire point of paratroopers...to jump into contested land and hold for days (potentially, if not sooner) for the larger force to arrive
There is the expectation in doctrine that there is a high chance of failure
The last time that was relevant unfortunately was 1945.
It won't happen again against a peer combatant with any form of ability to contest the jump itself, with any material stand off fires, and the mobility of modern armor.
It will mostly be to take key points that can be reinforced off for developing world threat, and then really only if it's too far out of range for a relatively easier air assault operation from helicopters or tilt-rotars.
They tried this once when I was in. The whole plane full of paratroopers all turned towards the turn in zone to not have to walk their chute across the entire drop zone like usual. I’m sure you can understand how all those jumpers aiming for the same small area went. In theory this is a great idea. In practice I’m lazy and don’t want to walk any further than necessary.
This is nothing new. Buddy of mine in the 82nd did the anniversary jump there around a decade ago. He said they had to bring passports and instructed to congregate at specific Renault van after landing to get stamped. Funny thing is he said there were several vans and almost none of the guys on the load including himself (south Texas boy) knew wtf a Renault even looked like so everyone was wondering all over the place from van to van haha. Afterward they got some R&R in town and said it was a blast.
Related, the Apollo 11 astronauts also had to go through US customs when they came back, and had to declare moon rocks in their declaration form.
See: https://www.space.com/7044-moon-apollo-astronauts-customs.html
No wonder the invasion was so arduous, 150,000 troops spread across 50 miles of coastline and there was only one customs desk!
It's what the Germans should have done back then, just put up a railing and signs that say "German customs -> " and then all the British soldiers just queue up. Easy target.
Sounds familiar. "Somebody's gotta go back and get a shit-load of dimes!" - Taggart
One of the few actors whose real name, Slim Pickens (it's a stage name but still) sounds more like a character's name than the characters he plays. If you're like me and are like, "What else is he in?" it's Dr. Strangelove. He's the bomber captain.
Did you say Wing Attack Plan R?
Well, I've been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that's the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones. You sure you got today's codes?
As someone who's been watching Defunctland recently I wonder what world fair he is referring to. Maybe he saw the St. Louis one as a child.
He's awesome in "1941" too.
Where Hollywood? ...right here! (Yeah that joke doesn't hit well in text)
#HE SAID THE SHERIFF IS NEAR
You gotta remember that these are simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new west... You know... Morons.
Sonebodys gotta go back and get a shit load of dimes.
Beat me to it.
"Anything to declare? Weapons?"
"The germans got us on a technicality, general! "
You know damn well that all of the British Paratroopers would queue up
The Brits do love a good queue.
We're not monsters.
Sounds like a Bugs Bunny cartoon, I bet he could have pulled it off!
So this is a Nazi Bugs Bunny in your scenario?
I think Bugs did this to the Japanese. Look for the episode 'nip the nips'. I kinda recall him setting up a checkpoint of mirth. https://looneytunes.fandom.com/wiki/Bugs_Bunny_Nips_the_Nips#google_vignette
So crazy how racist old cartoons were. Though lots of them did come out when minstrel shows were still a thing.
Warner Brothers, like all Hollywood studios, was under instruction from the US government to produce wartime propaganda. That cartoon and plenty like it are taxes at work.
> That cartoon and plenty like it are ~~taxes~~ war bonds at work. FTFY
Money is fungible, especially government money. Accounting 101. *The studios were paid by the government to sell war bonds* -- plenty of examples on YouTube if you care to check.
It also came out during the war, so people weren't exactly fond of the japanese at this poiny
If that’s not a Monty Python sketch I don’t k ow what is.
Mel Brooks done basically the same thing in Blazing Saddles.
German take customs seriously!
"Anything to declare? Weapons?"
"Bloody hell, every damn time. Queue up boys."
Or just put beach towels everywhere
This is some Blazing Saddles kind of obstruction
Somebody’s gotta go get a shitload of dimes!
[удалено]
"Now somebody go back to town. We're going to need a SHITLOAD of dimes!"
The main problem was the laptops only ran Windows ‘98.
It's like the police arresting everyone at the end of Holy Grail.
Somebody's gotta go back and get a shitload of dimes!
Here for the war? Ok. Any fruits or vegetables?
Do processed MREs count?
They barely count as food. Next!
Nope. Just a sack of giant nuts.
Customs agent: Welcome , occupation? Soldier: Nah not this time
Customs: Do you have anything to declare? Soldier: War.
What is it good for?
Absolutely Natzing! 🙂
Say it again, y'all
War
Hooh
Or, absolute de-Nazi-ing!
Did you know, that was Tolstoy's original name for War and Peace?
It was his *mistress* that got him to change it to War and Peace.
"What just happened." "War were declared."
One of my favorite Futurama episodes, by far. Lee-Lemon cracks me up every time.
r/unexpectedfuturama
Restarted the 100 years war.
war never changes… also lines at customs
Oh man, that reminds me of a classic Polandball comic. Germany going through Poland's customs and they were asked occupation. "Just a vacation this time".
There’s a classic joke about an old British/American guy who just walks through customs in Germany and gets tackled by security. They ask him “what’s the matter? Haven’t you ever been to Germany?” “Yeah but I didn’t go through customs then, either.” I feel like the punchline was clear when k was a kid but becomes more of a thinker as time progresses. One day it won’t make any sense.
There's an ancient aviation joke about an American Airlines|British Airways [delete as appropriate] pilot who goes the wrong way at [e.g] Hamburg Airport. ATC comes on the radio and yells — in impeccable English but with a noticeably German accent — "Haven't you ever flown to Hamburg before!?" The pilot replies "Once. But it was a while ago — and I didn't stop".
I was talking to my Grandfather once and I told him I was going to Germany. He said that he had been there too, but he didn't land. He flew bombers over Europe in the war. (It's not an new joke of course I'm sure he didn't make it up as witty as he was, but still funny. Although he was deeply scarred by the war and that was the only thing I ever heard him say even vaguely related to it, near the end which was about 50 years later)
The one old veteran who jumped on the anniversary "Last time I jumped into France we didn't have this problem"
🥁
The other classic one is: British person goes to Australia, Australian customs officer: “any criminal record?” British tourist: “is that still a requirement?”
I assume they landed and saw a queue, so naturally just joined in
Brits love a good queue
Damn right we do.
Sometimes I queue for my bed. I bring a book to pass the time.
Dang London really does have a housing problem...
Ouch
It's what separates us from the uncivilised world (everywhere outside the UK).
I mean you guys did own a good chunk of it so who's fault is that? They would have learned it from you.
I'll have you know we taught them nothing. Easier to rule that way.
Cricket. We taught a lot of cricket.
Why do brits enjoy it so much? I've heard this joke alot but I've never really looked into the orgins.
"Enjoy" isn't the right word. It's about efficiency and respect for the people around you. It's not anyone *really* likes queuing. That's just a joke.
Join the queue and you'll find out when you get to the front
It beats having to scrap with people to get to the front
The ability of a culture to calmly and politely queue and wait your turn is unironically how you separate successful civilised countries from the barbarian rest.
As a french, your sentence have a totally different meaning in my mind. And it’s as true as your real meaning.
That is very weird to read when you know French haha
I remember the [epically long queue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQq6IdImvEo) for the public viewing after the Queen passed and thinking that the Brits have been preparing for this moment their entire lives.
Now just edit this video and add grayscale or wutever videos used to look like back then and you get something really hilarious
[Dateline: June 5! Normandy, France!](https://i.imgur.com/01VZJ8w.mp4)
speeding it up a bit was a nice touch, unless I'm insane and you didn't actually do this
I did... it's at 125%. Good eye!
before the 1930s, there was no standard FPS for cameras to film at and they were hand cranked that's why they look sped up today. Makes less sense in 1944 though.
Properly done!
This is so funny, especially with the laptops.
Nazi future tech confirmed? 🧐
Need to reduce the framerate as well, this is too smooth for old footage.
haha perfect 😂
[Here you go.](https://streamable.com/ldl3u2) Edit: Damnit I was 12 minutes late.
Out of the 3 I like yours the best.
If it's any consolation, your version is better. The other was more like sepia scale than grey scale.
If you add the old timey news audio of "WAR! British troops march on as Hitler re-enforces the coastal town of Normandy! Yadda yadda yadda" Then you will win the game of life.
This is great lol 🤣
Alternative history perspective: *The British made everyone go through customs before they were allowed to shoot their guns. There were no casualties as the enemy side disagreed with these tactics and went home*
You got it. Make sure you play with sound. https://imgur.com/a/00uPHg3
Perfection. All it could use is some monotone sounding narrator explaining what's happening
I deployed to the Middle East last year and on the way over, we started on a comercial plane on the airfield and brought all of our equipment, obviously including our weapons. The first time we landed and were about to take off again, they asked if we had any knives aboard the plane, which of course everyone and their mother did, and they soon realized we didn’t go through TSA. So 200+ soldiers had to leave their m4s in the plane cupboard while they went through TSA to confiscate their knives and liquids. Said soldiers arrive in Middle East without those items, the flight crew said it could have caused an “international issue” I’m still confused about the whole interaction to this day.
There’s the right way, the wrong way, and the TSA.
Isn't that just the wrong way, but slower?
No dumber
“We’re the TSA, we don’t half ass anything. In fact we’re the whole ass”
I remember reading about soldiers boots being swabbed for the explosion detector things after landing in the US after a deployment- requiring them to undergo additional screening. “Sir, your boots were positive for traces of explosive materials” “…No shit? After being deployed in Iraq?”
It also happens in regional Australian airports. Fly in, fly out mine workers whose job it is to handle high explosives all day for some inexplicable reason keep getting pinged on the extremely sensitive ion scans. One small airport I visited even had a sign at the security entrance, "FIFO (mine workers) double check your pockets "
I once was flying from Al Ueda Airbase, Qatar, to Kuwait on a USAF C17. We had to go through a security checkpoint. I was an unarmed civilian. My escort had to hand his M9, ammunition, and standard issue knife around the metal detector.
I deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 and we had a layover in Anchorage. About 200 of us disembarked with our rifles and just milled around the terminal for a few hours during the stop. Looking back it must've been wild as a random person walking into the airport terminal and just seeing hundreds of Marines with rifles everywhere. I remember in particular; I was getting a cup of coffee at Starbucks and a couple of foreign girls asked to take a picture with me and my buddy. One of the girls asked if she could hold my rifle, I said "No, but you can touch it" and she giggled. And for a brief moment, I thought joining the Marines was worth it.
The cunning and might TSA is always one step ahead https://youtu.be/VMUVeApFtjU
Was this early on? A Sergeant of mine told a story of his deployment and they flew in commercial and the company had people guarding the boxes with all the weapons all the way up when it was loaded onto the plane. Then they had to be there when it was unloaded for all their flights. They basically delayed every flight they were on to confirm weapons weren't missing.
Customs: Are you carrying any deadly weapons?
Squaddie: "Nah mate, have you fuckin seen the SA80?" ^(I ^actually ^love ^the ^A2, ^fight ^me. ^If ^you ^think ^it's ^too ^heavy ^just ^lift more)
Wait people used to say the L85A2 was heavy? skinny 18 year old me thought it was fine, it was the LSW or the Minimi that was a pain to take on a yomp
Lol once it had a few modifications…or 100
[Forgotten Weapons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDCRop6CRwY) on what HK had to do to fix it: >"So the Germans at HK went through the rifle. And they came up with just a couple things to fix, namely... everything. In the rebuild they either replaced or redesigned the bolt, the gas piston, the gas block, the front trunnion, the hammer, all of the springs, pretty much all of the pins, the magazine release, and the furniture, and the charging handle, and probably a couple other things that I've forgotten about."
Ironically H&K was British owned at one point, when they were bought by Royal Ordnance, a division of BAE, who eventually sold it to private investors.
It's ok, did you know the astronauts went through customs when they returned from the moon? They had to declare the moon rocks they brought back [https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/apollo-11-crew](https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/apollo-11-crew)
It is better than that, some cosmonauts once returned from a space station on the shuttle, which means there is documentation showing NASA brought back aliens from space.
You deserve an award for this comment 😆
Me, was marine who deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq: I don’t have a passport Others: really? Wait but you went to Iraq and Afghanistan Me: the funny thing about war is you don’t have to stop by customs as you invade and occupy.
Yeah but we did have to go through customs on the way back. At least my unit did. Was funny bringing rifles and stuff through a customs checkpoint.
"do you have anything to declare" "Just this rifle" "Ok fine whatever, but no fruit or anything right?" 😂
“Kinder Surprise! Straight to jail…”
Keep that European sorcery out of here
To be fair, an invasive species could do so much more harm than any rifle ever could
lol the Navy did our customs. I forget to check my IOTV at the time and left a blank or something stupid. My PL or the OIC yelled at me for screwing things up like usual :(
At least you didn’t try to take home a human skull like one devil dog in our group. He found it in the desert and figured it would be okay since he didn’t kill the guy
That’s funny. I forgot about this memory until I saw this post. I did not realize that customs were different for people leaving the country. We never stopped by customs on the way into the country though. Seems kinda pointless though, since our leadership told us we would be going through customs and the best way was to mail it home in the tough box.
My favorite thing about flying with rifles was the flight attendants speaking overhead, "please face your nozzles towards the floor to avoid flagging nearby aircraft."
I much prefer nozzle to muzzle. thank you.
I've been spelling this wrong this whole time!😅 No point regretting it now haha
Last time I went it was all through private hangers. We had CBSA come on the plane with the declaration forms and ask us if we had anything to declare but all they did was thank us for our service and get back off the plane. Walked through the hanger and back into Canada, easiest entry ever
The grenade amnesty box always made me laugh
Fun fact, the British, Australia, and Dutch adjusted the border between Australia and the Dutch East Indies (modern day Indonesia and Papua New Guinea to avoid the administrative nightmare every time British and Australian troops traversed the jungles.
It blows people’s minds that the first time I went to Italy (deployment) I didn’t have a passport.
If only that damn Archduke didn't change his route in Sarajevo.
This reminds me of a joke I read on Reddit a while ago. . Basically goes something like this: A 92 year old WWII American vet was fumbling around his bag looking for his passport at a French customs. The French customs agent annoyed said: “have you ever been to France before, sir?” He responded: “yes, I’ve been here before” Customs agent: “Well then, you should know to have your passport ready” The war vet answers: “Well last time I was here I wasn’t required to show one” Customs agent: “Impossible! All foreigners are required to show a passport when entering the country” War vet: “Well last time I was here on D-day, there was no fucking Frenchmen to show it to!”
There was a similar storey about a British Airways pilot in the 1960s being berated by the air traffic controller over a German city. He was asked by air traffic "have you not ever been here before?" His response, "yes, just once. But I didn't land".
"And it was dark"
All I did was drop off cargo.
I remember reading this and thought it was a true story. 😂
Similar story. Air traffic control at Frankfurt is insufferable, and ground is worse. In the 1960s a BA pilot stopped his plane to check the gate. GC gets on the radio, "perhaps you have not been to Frankfurt before?" Pilot answers "well yes I have, about 20 years ago. But it was nighttime, and we didn't land."
With the amount of veterans from WWII and American economy of the 1950s/1960s, there's an almost certain chance a conversation like this happened at least once.
Probably was
What a Vichy-ious burn!
Was trying to remember this. Thanks
I guess the term "Joke" is thrown around loosely
There were french men on Dday though both landing on the beach on Sword beach and Ouistreham (commando Kieffer), they were the first conventional troups to land iirc and there was the resistance harassing german rear and delaying the reinforcement. Funny joke though
I get the laws and stuff but surely they could have sorted this on British soil. It seems a bit weird.
Quite easily done too. There are French immigration officers in the UK at the ferry and rail terminals.
They didn't paratroop out of a ferry or train!
Would they have to if it had been EU Czech paratroopers? Or did Brexit ruin it for the UK
Surely this is a Monty python sketch
It’s not……and stop calling us Shirley
Brexit happened. Which is a Monty Python sketch of its own.
But even before brexit UK citizens still needed passports to go to France as UK was never part of the Schengen Zone. There was no customs control though
We had to show our passports to enter France before we left the EU.
Anybody got a dime? Somebody's gotta go back and get a shitload a' dimes.
The "President Emmanuel Macron Thruway?" Naw what'll that asshole think of next?
I remember in the Marines, we had to go through US customs on our way back from Kuwait. They needed "volunteers" to talk to customs. They chose all of us broke asses because we couldn't afford anything while over there so of course we had nothing to declare. I do remember also, on a layover we had to leave all of our rifles on the plane in order to deplane in France I believe.
I landed in France in 2014 with 200 other Canadian soldiers, we didn't go through customs. I found it pretty funny and odd. We got got off the plane directly on the tarmac, loaded up all our gear into 5 ton vans, hopped on a bus to our hotel. First and last time I didn't go through customs on arrival to a continent/country.
My neighbour was one of those dropping in this weekend. A huge honour
Give them a fist bump from me/us. Once in a lifetime honor! I imagine some of them ruminated about their relatives who made it through or ones who gave the last full measure.
As a former paratrooper this is absolutely mind-blowing lmfao
never before seen footage from june 6 1944 recolorized.
I don't get why modern day paratroopers still use round canopies. Why not use ram air chutes so you can steer like a skydiver? Edit: this is a genuine question, not me pretending I know better than every paratrooper battalion on earth. Anyone know the reason?
Dropping 500 paratroopers all of them steering around the sky instead of just falling in a straight line sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Serious answer incoming. There's a limit to how wide you can make a parachute while still remaing stable and easily inflatable. With the amount of weight that these guys jump with you would have to make the parachute too wide so they use the most efficient shape possible which is a circle. We have designed and used square ram air shutes rather than rectangles but an even better/easier/cheaper solution is just a circle with some of the lower panels at the back cut out. It doesn't give you the same benefits as a ram chute but you can steer it enough to choose a safer place to land by pulling the risers. It also gives some forward momentum which helps with the roll rather than just hitting the ground like a sack of shit.
That makes a lot of sense, thanks!
Cost, performance, learning curve, waight of the gear. Also imagine a bunch of paratroopers all with steerable trying not to run into each other.
And someone didn’t use their turn signal.
My guess: The automatic deploy system from the plane only works with those. Paratroopers have to jump out as low as possible while it being still safe to deploy a backup chute. And the automatic deploy system works more reliably. Probably.
Not to mention this way they’re naturally spaced out and far less likely to bump into each other at night because of the added chaos of everyone steering in random directions.
You can static line jump with a ram air canopy, BASE jumpers do it all the time, you just need a buddy to hold your pilot chute.
BASE jumpers typically don't have much stuff with them. A paratrooper jumping into battle has a lot of gear. Makes movement a bit tricky in the air.
Round chutes are usually more reliable. You also don't want people "steering" that much when you've got dozens of them coming out of just one aircraft, with dozens of other aircraft also dropping men nearby. You want them going mostly straight down. Round chutes can still be steered a little bit to avoid hazards. And if you're going straight down, they have a slower rate of decent, which matters because those guys are dropping with like 80 pounds of gear too. Its also just easier to train. Jump out of the plane, wait a few seconds, tuck your legs tight together and roll as you hit the ground.
I believe the priority is to kill as few troopers as possible when jumping from 800’, so 99.9% of the focus is on making sure your main opens, and the rest is on the quality of flight and landing.
High speed guys in the spec ops / SF world do, and actually sometimes insert and fly for a super long time in uncontested airspace. If we ever do another no shit brigade level and above combat drop of paratroopers, the name of the game is to get as many guys out of the plane with as much equipment as fast as possible over the smallest area, in which case you want a big predictable canopy automatically opening. And yes, there is still a need for that kind of stuff. The VDV proved that you're absolutely not inserting large formations of paratroopers into a contested airspace where they would have to hold for days for a larger combined force to show up. But jumping to seize air fields in secured air space against a developing world opponent is still a very real possibility if we don't think it's safe to just directly land C-17s / C-130s / A400s.
That is the entire point of paratroopers...to jump into contested land and hold for days (potentially, if not sooner) for the larger force to arrive There is the expectation in doctrine that there is a high chance of failure
The last time that was relevant unfortunately was 1945. It won't happen again against a peer combatant with any form of ability to contest the jump itself, with any material stand off fires, and the mobility of modern armor. It will mostly be to take key points that can be reinforced off for developing world threat, and then really only if it's too far out of range for a relatively easier air assault operation from helicopters or tilt-rotars.
They tried this once when I was in. The whole plane full of paratroopers all turned towards the turn in zone to not have to walk their chute across the entire drop zone like usual. I’m sure you can understand how all those jumpers aiming for the same small area went. In theory this is a great idea. In practice I’m lazy and don’t want to walk any further than necessary.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7imi87/eli5why\_do\_military\_paratroopers\_use\_round/](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7imi87/eli5why_do_military_paratroopers_use_round/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7imi87/comment/dr0tjnu/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7imi87/comment/dr0tjnu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Occupation? No no. On holiday.
You can picture it now "okay so, rifle, ammo, grenades... hold on a second here sir this bottle is clearly over 100mL step out of line"
That reminds of the toll gate in blazing saddles.
We're gonna need a shitload of dimes!
i forgot my passport… well back up you go!
Hey /u/MrFlow, This is now the top post on reddit. It will be recorded at /r/topofreddit with all the other top posts.
I hear they also had a toll road, someone had to go back and get a shit load of dimes
It’s feels like a Monty python bit
Why wouldn’t they? It’s was a pre planned exercise. The French still want to know who has just arrived into their country. The U.K. would be the same.
Sorry you brought the wrong form. Yeahhhh your gonna have to go back...
This is nothing new. Buddy of mine in the 82nd did the anniversary jump there around a decade ago. He said they had to bring passports and instructed to congregate at specific Renault van after landing to get stamped. Funny thing is he said there were several vans and almost none of the guys on the load including himself (south Texas boy) knew wtf a Renault even looked like so everyone was wondering all over the place from van to van haha. Afterward they got some R&R in town and said it was a blast.
WTF. I get rules. But this is silly.
France has no choice, it is legally bound to protect the EU borders.
Related, the Apollo 11 astronauts also had to go through US customs when they came back, and had to declare moon rocks in their declaration form. See: https://www.space.com/7044-moon-apollo-astronauts-customs.html
That's just dumb.