Whidbey Island pilots held accountable for sky art
A Navy pilot took it upon himself to decorate the sky over Okanogan County, Washington with his contrails. It didn’t go over well with folks at his duty station on Whidbey Island, according to The Spokesman-Review;
The Naval Air Station in Whidbey Island has claimed responsibility for the drawing, calling it “unacceptable” and “of zero training value.”
The base’s public affairs office on Friday referred questions to the Navy’s Pacific Fleet headquarters in San Diego, where Lt. Cmdr. Leslie Hubbell said the crew involved in the sky-drawing would be held accountable.
Hubbell said an investigation has been launched, although it’s not clear who in the chain of command will make the final decision on disciplinary action. She declined to speculate on whether the crew members involved could be discharged.
Hubbell said the aircraft involved was an EA-18G Growler from the VAQ-130 Electronic Attack Squadron based at Whidbey Island, on a “routine training” flight. The highly maneuverable plane is a cousin of the F/A-18 Super Hornet, outfitted with radar and communication jamming equipment.
Locals generally took it as the joke that it was intended to be;
Ramone Duran said he was running errands when he looked up and saw what he thought looked like the start of someone trying to draw a male member with jet contrails.
About five minutes later, Duran said, the drawing was complete.
“After it made the circles at the bottom, I knew what it was and started laughing,” Duran said. “It was pretty funny to see that. You don’t expect to see something like that.”
Misty Waugh, a server and bartender at The Club, said she wasn’t aware of the drawing until her 12-year-old son texted her a picture.
“I thought it was pretty funny, and so did he” she said. “A lot of people have been talking about it.”
Y’all thought it was funny, too, since about fifty of you sent me links last night. The Pentagon isn’t known for it’s sense of humor, though.
Category: Navy
Maybe the pilots wife just gave birth, and he was making an announcement that they would raise the child as male.
He just one-upped the whole porta-potty art world.
A commentator in one a post I read says that the pilot did it over Washington to show Trump what he/she thought of him. Not sure how this is known since the Navy hasn’t identified the crew and I don’t think the Pres was in Washington…State!
I didn’t know that military jets (except the Blue Angels) could sky write.
All aircraft (piston or jet) can produce condensation trails (contrails).
Contrails form when hot humid air from engine exhaust mixes with outside air.
When and if they form and to what degree depend on the atmospheric conditions at the altitude the aircraft is flying.
On the other hand demonstration aircraft make smoke trails by injecting mineral oil into the engine exhaust.
A pilot making any type of recognizable shape in the sky calls for some pretty good spacial reasoning and flying skill.
This pilots attempt was actually pretty symmetrical.If this was this pilots first attempt at skywriting, I say slap his wrist but keep him, he has potential.
Thanks for the explanation Slick. So this could not have been done just anytime? Took a lot of nature and luck for the conditions to be right I guess.
Contrails form under certain conditions, sometimes they don’t. It’s about the relative humidity in the air, the dew point, lapse rate, etc. They will form on a given day at a specific altitude, not below and they will not form above a given alt as well. That said, if they form at say 24’600 feet given the local conditions, you can go above that, leave a contrail, dip below then reposition for another part of the drawing, climb into the alt to form them..
Eastern WA is largely rural farmland. There are tons of military training routes (MTR) and areas set aside for military training. These are published on aeronautical charts and available as NOTAM’s (NOTice To AirMen)
If you ever saw “Top Gun”, it can’t come as any great surprise that Naval aviators spend a lot of time thinking about dicks…
Could be a cowboy hat also if the minds weren’t so nasty.:-)
These are the warrior kinds who will keep our skies safe and sweep clean the enemy’s skies. They have gumption and spirit unlike the meek souls who are forever wondering what trouble awaits if they break a mini-rule somewhere. To that crew I say: Bravo Zulu.
Mike, talking about a cowboy hat, doesn’t it look like two flat rope spins using a Sampson # 2 spot cord or poly with a leather burner.
In the ready room the pilot says to the guy bragging about passing out naked in the barracks on the tile floor with his morning salute full-one: “Hold my beer!”
Is the pilot skilled? Yes. Is the pilot funny? Hell, yeah!!! Is that appropriate? Uh, no.
10/10 troll level: expert.
Give that man a prize.
“Hey guys, watch this.”
“YOU draw a dick in the sky, and I’ll buy your drinks” – “Really? WATCH ME!!!”
This guy is going to be a LEGEND in the aviation community. 😀
Whaddya mean, “gonna be”?
Funny? Hell yeah. Gonna cause a problem? Oh hell yeah… somebody stepped in it BIGTIME there. The powers that be today have no sense of humor that they are aware of. I think that at a certain point it is surgically removed. Personally, if I got called on the carpet for it I’d go with the cowboy hat story and draw them a picture, they’d see what a shitty artist I was and close the case. Maybe. Might work.
I hear that.
I can only hope the pilot is a SERIOUS short-timer.
The USAF is short a bazillion pilots so I’m guessing the Navy is also. He’ll (if it was a he) be the SLJO for a long time…and drink free in the club for a long time.
That makes me think that Pilot might have been given a case of the ass by some prissy Superior and thought something like “They’re way short on Pilots these days, WTF are they gonna do?”
That pilot would never pay for a beer, coffee, a meal or a call girl if I was around.
Achievement Unlocked:
Superphallus!
Top that one, Marine Corps!
If it weren’t a dick, someone would simply complain about chem trails.
I personally thinks it’s hilarious.
Those guys will never have to buy their own drinks at the O’Club ever again.
Who are these legendary people who give away beers for free?
They don’t exist.
I don’t always go to bars, but when I do, I ask for my free beer and they kick me out.
You sound like the guy who stares at orange juice cans that have “concentrate” printed on them.
Yef would have had to retreat to his safe space in his parents’ basement with his blankie, a cookie, and a cup of warm milk if he had ever set foot inside Trader Jon’s in Pensacola, where a lot of the legendary Navy and Marine Corps Aviators, Naval Flight Officers, and Naval Aircrewmen used to hang out. Yef’s “if you ain’t infantry, you ain’t shit” babbling nonsense would have lasted less than a minute.
And yes, those legendary Navy and Marine Corps Aviators, Naval Flight Officers, and Naval Aircrewmen often drank for free.
BwaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHawhew…….BwaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa
Ha…..Oh man, too good on a rainy Saturday morn.
Well let me know when you skywrite a dick with your F18 and I’ll be there to buy you those free beers.
I’ll hand you a case of the beer of your choice 😀
“Zero training value”, huh? Notice the beginning and end of the run. The pilot has not only mastered spatial awareness, but also the temperature-moisture layers at altitude. They way that he (and we are assuming it was a male pilot) failed to leave entry and exit contrails means that the layer where contrails could form was properly identified and precisely engaged.
Oh. I was wondering how it was done since I didn’t think that anyone but the Blue Angels could “sky write” by pushing a button. That is some serious skills.
Not really. A figure eight and half a racetrack are not difficult flight maneuvers; the “sky write” is provided by every day contrails.
Somewhere in Whidbey Island a Commanding Officer is banging his head against a wall, and the Command Master Chief is laughing his ass off.
“Somewhere in Whidbey Island a Commanding Officer is banging his head against a wall…”
Yup, and that’ll be primarily because of all of the shrill shrieking that’s coming at him from higher headquarters, and also because of the 5,000 mile-long politically correct micromanagement screwdriver that OPNAV just stuck in his ass. He’s gonna be getting plenty of attention and ‘help’ that he absolutely does not want for the foreseeable future.
However, AW1Ed, I’ll bet you a beer that when it comes right down to it, that CO is going to be struggling to keep a straight face when he administers the inevitable ass-chewing to that Growler crew.
I know damn well that I’d be giggling like an adolescent schoolgirl at a Justin Bieber concert if I was in the room…
And that’s a bet I shall not take, Mick. But I’d love to be a fly on THAT wall to spectate the festivities!
At least his/her guys didn’t drive their plane into the broadside of a A380. This is some of the best national attention the Navy’s had all year.
Jesus, leave it to a fucking nuke…;)
The best training evolutions should always have a “fun” component. It makes them more memorable and that is the purpose of training, right? 8^}
THAT Pilot will now be forever known as “The one who drew a dick in the sky”!
Dick Skywriter does sound like a good Porno Name.
And a legend is born!
Any suggestions as to what his new callsign will be?
Back in the day before everyone completely lost their sense humor about every damn thing in the world, callsigns in Navy and Marine Corps fleet squadrons were notoriously politically incorrect.
The pilot would probably have been dubbed ‘Prick’, ‘Wiener’, or ‘Scrotum’, and the Electronic Warfare Officer in the back seat would get ‘SkyCock’ or ‘Ballsack’, or something along those lines.
Out at Nellis in about ’01 I saw a female fighter pilot in the club in a flight suit. She filled it out just right in all the right places. I told my AF bud that I could see how she got her call sign of “Mounds”. He said, nope, that’s not why. Almond Joys have nuts, Mounds don’t.
Pilot -Quick Draw.
EWO – Baba Looey.
“Frank” and “Beans”
Callsign: Boner
More apropos: Woody
I think it is more like art. Surprised the hippie types are not defending this guy.
Personally, I think it looks like the Arby’s hat.
Put this in the WOT, but still makes me chuckle.
This is how I envision the locals responding: https://youtu.be/CpiP_jN1Pv4
At first glance my take was it’s a ten gallon cowboy hat. If the member were small and skinny as opposed to resembling what mine looked like before I suffered from dickiedoo, then maybe something the Navy can relate to. But seriously, it could be anything and a good defense lawyer will claim just that.
What’s the problem now? LCDR Hall has no sense of humor? None of the WAVES officers I ran into had one, either. This is rather mild stuff, considering everything. I’d like to see this pilot do a bikinigraph.
Besides, Priapus would be so proud. Doing the artwork Roman-style has been around for a long, long time.
Should I post one of Martialis’s epigrams for this occasion?
His only mistake was making it small enough to be seen within the same horizon of view.
Go big or go home.
I thought it funny as hell but I know they’re going to get some kind of disciplinary action out of it. The one thing that pissed me off was that a bunch of media reporting it used stock pictures of either F-15’s or F-16’s in their stories. The media types seem to be phoning it in always now.
Had to be Naval Aviators, AF don’t have the “balls” to do something like that.
Gonna be funny if the crew was transgender ghey female muslim.
This is going to get good when they try to figure out where in the UCMJ it says you can’t draw a cock and balls in the sky. This is hilarious because 99% of the military draws a cock and balls during their time, but leave it to the perpetually offended to be offended.
Ah, yes, and that’s why we have Art. 134.
You always have that element around who perpetually thinks that Military types ought to settle for milk, cookies and Tiddly Winks when it comes to recreation.
I used to display my artistic creativity on the wall of stall #3.
Terminal Lance addresses the topic:
https://terminallance.com/2017/11/17/terminal-lance
This guy is -funny-, but often highly NSFW
With Apologies to Stan Jones…
A young Pilot went flying out one cold and windy day……
And his contrails he thought about when he went along his way….
When all at once, a mighty flight of fighter planes he saw..
Flying through the ragged sky,,, and they begin to draw..
Yippee Ki yo….. Yippee Ki Yaaaaaa.
Dick writers in…. Dick writers in the sky,,,
The photo is turned. It was a picture of Kilroy Was Here.
hahahah!
Impressive priapism. Just sayin’
I hope they aren’t too hard on him for doing that.
Bunch of sexist pigs in this place.
“He” “His” “This guy” etc….
Could’ve been a chick that did it.
Funny? Yes
Worth the extra SHARP training the rest of us are going to have to sit through as a result of this? No. no it’s not.
This artist was exercising his Constitutional right to free speech. Fag rights or something.
Can’t see how the Chair Force will be able to beat this.
Well, this does seem rather like a case of very petty pecker envy to me.
Some bored smartass Navy pilot drew a 10-gallon hat in the sky and someone peckerwood got his boxers in a bunch over it.
It is my sincere hope that at some point in the future, the military gets its sense of humor back.
I think Max over at Terminal Lance nailed it with this drawing
https://terminallance.com/2017/11/17/terminal-lance-fly-hard/
Shoulda spent a bit more time on the bell end