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PostPosted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 5:45 pm 
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What is the earliest known use of these cliches?

Stuka Dive Siren Audio

Where would the original audio have come from? There can't be many circumstances where someone with the means to record it would have been in the way of a Stuka bombing run.

I assume that it was prevalent enough by 1980 to be mocked by the jet in the movie Airplane having piston engine sounds in exterior flying shots. (It is certainly well known enough to have its own TV Tropes article.) What is the oldest movie you know of that has the audio?

"These Fokkers were flying Messerschmitts"

Apparently, the joke came to prominence when a comic named Stan Boardman told it on a television show hosted by Des O'Connor. (Note, Des O'Connor hosted several shows with different names: the Des O'Connor Show (1963-1973), Des O'Connor Entertains (1974-1976), and Des O'Connor Tonight. (1977–2002)) There is a claim, I cannot confirm, that the joke caused the show to be banned. Another source claims it only ended live broadcasts of the show – and then only until the 1990s. It is unclear exactly when the relevant episode aired, but some sources claim it was in the 1980s. In any event, in the O'Connor telling, the story came from an interview a "about a few weeks ago" on the television show This Is Your Life of a Polish fighter pilot named Charlie Polanski. Obviously, a comedian making a joke isn't the most reliable source, but it is something to go on. Interestingly, while there are many different tellings of the joke, but the most common element in my experience is that the pilot is Polish.

One article that states that David Niven claimed it was told by Douglas Bader. Another telling of the joke closely resembles - and even mentions - the O'Connor telling.

(As an aside, this is by far the most common joke I hear from visitors at the museum and I've grown tired of it.)

Old/Bold Pilots

Although not worded in the same way it is usually told today, the last of the "Ten Commandments for Safe Flying" on page 57 of the Owner's Manual for the J3C-65, which dates to May 1946, has an early version of it:
10. THOU SHALT KNOW ALWAYS–THE GOOD PILOT IS THE SAFE PILOT: It's better to be an old pilot than a bold pilot.


Given how widespread use of the Piper Cub was this would explain how it became such a common truism.

Anyone have any more they want to throw in?

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PostPosted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 10:35 pm 
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It's been said many film helicopter sounds come from the old Whirlybirds series...So you'll hear turbine JetRangers and Hueys miraculously sound like a piston Bell 47...including its distinctive cranking sound on startup.I
I'm a bit skeptical of this, I can't say I've ever noticed it, and at least one internet "expert" who was discussing it blew his credibility when he emphatically stated it's distinctive sound was made by the helicopter's drive belts...which the '47 does not have.

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2019 5:58 pm 
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While we're at it, what's the earliest use of "That flak is so thick you could walk on it"?

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PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2019 2:30 pm 
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Perhaps you guys might like to read this list of collected "Fighter Pilot Idioms".

No, these aren't WWII-isms, they're words and phrases that for whatever reason are used all too often in current-day USAF fighter bars and briefing rooms (and I believe there are a couple USN-origin phrases in here, too). Some of these refer to actual air combat situations, some of them are talking about how people speak or act, and some of them are just funny phrases to use in casual conversation. All of them, though, are part of American air combat culture.

Thought they might fit into this thread and you guys might be entertained, hehe.

Standard Fighter Pilot Brief Idioms:

It depends
Line of sight
Technique only
Smokin a Lucky (alternately: Smokin' a Lucky, talkin' about the weather)
Head down in the drool cup
Green goo
Knock the rust off
All things being equal
Looking through the soda straw
Trying to figure out who's who in the zoo
Laminate it and take it to the field
Put it in your tool kit/hip pocket
Get all your crap in one sock
A couple of potatoes
6 for one, half dozen the other
Closest alligator to the canoe
Breathe through your nose
Low hanging fruit
Same way, same day
Chuck spears
No harm, no foul
Head on a swivel
Beak to beak
Pull out the pistol
Put your boot on Gomer's neck
Warheads on foreheads
Sort to the mort
Mowin' and flowin'
Join up, shut the f--- up
You'll see when you get there
BLUF
A couple different ways to skin that cat
Walk the dog
Cage your brain
Get the band back together
Dog hump on that
Open up a can of worms
Over to you
Drive 'em around like yellow gear
Operation rounder wheel
In the short hairs
The juice isn't worth the squeeze.
Don't f--- it up
Don't suck
Stop sucking
Get your ducks in a row
S--- or get get off the pot
Any reattacks?
Good piece of gear
Break it down Barney style
Get on my soap box
Press the "I believe" button
If there is any doubt. there is no doubt
Hanging on the blades
Hanging on the stabs
Figure out how to crack that nut
Get your finger on the pulse
Cluedo
Hand jam
Long pole in the tent
Holes like Swiss cheese
Anchor down on that
Dovetail on to that
What have you
Lead turn that
Out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas
One pass, haul a--
Reasonable man theory
Cat herding
Helmet fire
Screwed the pooch
Bought the farm
Take a hard look
Call King's X
John Wayne in the break, Don Knotts on the ball.
Get that in your scan
Ham-fist it
Squeezing the black out of the stick
S--- it out
Can't answer the mail
Big highyacka
Shwoopenhousen
Cleared weird
Tits up/Tango Uniform
Speed of heat
Punted it into the stands
Go VFR direct
Soup to nuts
Cradle to grave
Long Road to short house
Fangs out
That's neither here nor there
Down in the weeds
Going down a rabbit hole
For mom and the kids
Piggyback
Hitch onto
Tack on
Pile on
Scooby snack
Mouth breather
Window licker
Blacker than a bag of a-holes
Bag of smashed apples
Punching the clown
Got 'em in the shorthairs/short-and-curlies
Good zero, Good night
Turn into a pumpkin
Nose high goes high
Lose sight, lose the fight
Shut your cake/pie hole
If you aren't having fun you're doing it wrong
Know more, suck less
You're in the back seat
Schmuckatelli
Stanley
Light the cans
Light the wicks
Just cycle the gens/DEECs
I'm comfortable pressing
Figure it out real time
____ told me it was tactical
A-holes and elbows
Teeth, hair, and eyeballs
Pink mist
All balls, dick, and forehead
So-to-speak
As one might say
If you will
We'll tighten it up in the jet
Off to the races
Twice the speed, half the caution/SA
That's what she said
Suckin' LAU
Sucking hind tit
Let's turn and burn
Discuss it offline
10 pounds of crap in a 5 pound bag
Burn some dead dinosaurs
Arcing and sparking
sugar of smash
Punch off the tanks (or stores, as desired)
Soup Sandwich
Take a good hard look at the weather before we step
S--- show
Chocolatey mess
Exploding cantaloupe
Exploding bucket of f---
Rip the wings off
Put it in your lap
Go to the moon
Zoom and boom
Lob a missile
Before we head downrange.
Shoot 'em in the face/lips
Step on their throats.
Crap out some flares
Mort yourself/He's a mort
Get out of Dodge
Dueling missiles
Rocket ripple down
He's a good dude/bro
Wall it up, ball it up
Hub-Capping
Cornhole
Only as good as your last landing
Putting out fires
Slay
Go full retard
Holster that missile

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PostPosted: Sat May 09, 2020 6:57 pm 
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So, I was watching the Pancho Barnes documentary today, and I noticed that some of the stock footage they used had a sign with the words "Through these portals pass the oldest and boldest pilots in the world" over the door. One quick Google search of that exact quote later and I found the clip they used. It's from 1951.

In the process, I also found out about the Old Bold Pilots Association. The Wikipedia article for the organization states that the name comes from an observation made in 1949 by early airmail pilot, E. Hamilton Lee. One of the references is a news article that notes Lee started flying in 1916. However, neither it, nor any of the readily available webpages that use the quote point to a work (book, interview, etc.) that it came from. The OBPA does oral history interviews, but it appears that started more recently than 1949. Interestingly, the Piper Cub manual cited in my original post predates this by three years.

Coincidentally, the documentary also offers a possibility as to where some of those stock aviation sound effects come from. It notes that one of Barnes' roles during the filming of Hell's Angels was to fly around balloons with microphones attached to get the audio they needed.

Randy Haskin wrote:
Perhaps you guys might like to read this list of collected "Fighter Pilot Idioms".

Thanks! Did you make this list? Where did it come from?

Randy Haskin wrote:
Go full retard

This one is definitely not an aviation only quote and can be attributed to the movie Tropic Thunder.

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PostPosted: Sat May 09, 2020 7:18 pm 
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How about "I'll sleep when I'm dead"?

I could swear I heard "You can sleep when you're dead" in a Vietnam War movie back in the late '70s, but have never been able to find it again. What I'd like to know is if it came before or after the 1976 Warren Zevon song "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead"--specifically, did Zevon originate that phrase, or did he get it from somewhere else?

BTW, my Dad, an old military pilot, had two common ones I'm sure he picked up in service: "It's as broad as it is long" and "Just let ol' Jesse rob this train." Anyone else ever hear those?


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PostPosted: Sat May 09, 2020 8:24 pm 
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Hell, just where did the following come from

D.I.L.L.I.G.A.F.

M.B.W.A.

Four aspect of flight:

1) Stall
2) Spin
3) Crash
4) Burn

If you see goats in front of your windshield, you are too low.


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PostPosted: Sat May 09, 2020 8:26 pm 
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Noha307 wrote:
Thanks! Did you make this list? Where did it come from?


Just collected from all over the place. I flew in USAF fighter squadrons from 1999-2015, so things heard daily in briefings and conversations, including collected from Navy brethren.

Noha307 wrote:
Randy Haskin wrote:
Go full retard

This one is definitely not an aviation only quote and can be attributed to the movie Tropic Thunder.


Not offered as an "aviation only" quote...simply as something heard often in military fighter talk.

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PostPosted: Sun May 10, 2020 4:29 pm 
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Randy Haskin wrote:
Just collected from all over the place. I flew in USAF fighter squadrons from 1999-2015, so things heard daily in briefings and conversations, including collected from Navy brethren.

Thanks! When it comes to things like this, it's really important to clarify exactly where it came from and trace it back as close as possible to the original source. The main reason for this thread is that cliches like "old/bold pilots" is that they have been so repeated that no one knows where they came from anymore. It's great to have someone who was actually there be able to attest to the fact that such terms were actually used at the time. Otherwise, you end up with nicknames like “The Fork-Tailed Devil” for the P-38 from less than reliable authors like Martin Caidin, that you have to question how accurate they actually are and how much they were really used.

Randy Haskin wrote:
Not offered as an "aviation only" quote...simply as something heard often in military fighter talk.

No problem, I just noted that one in particular because a) I have heard it used myself and I am in no way an actual pilot and b) I know that it is an internet meme.

Not to go too far off topic, but what helped my understanding of nose art more than any other was when I noticed that in the present day, soldiers were applying Internet memes to their equipment. (For example, M1 tanks festooned with "call me maybe" and "cash me outside". L-159s and F-35s called "Honey Badger".) It made me realize that World War II nose art was in many ways the Internet meme of its day.

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PostPosted: Mon May 11, 2020 7:03 am 
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Noha307 wrote:
they have been so repeated that no one knows where they came from anymore.


Excellent point.

About 15 years ago when I was a T-38 fighter lead-in instructor I was in a pre-sortie briefing with a Japanese exchange student. The flight lead (the other instructor) had just finished his briefing for the day's flight, at the end asking the student, "are there any questions?"

Humorously, the student said, "ah, yes sir....what does in mean to 'knock the rust off'?" Then he followed by asking, "what does it mean to 'kick him in the jimmy'?" The questions had the flight lead and I giggling to ourselves while trying to not embarrass the student.

I had this realization that in the fighter world we spoke using a lot of funny idioms that made very little sense to people looking in from the outside, so I just started writing them down for posterity. I have no idea where most of them came from, save the ones here and there you can clearly ident from non-aviation pop culture.

Later I happened across a couple similar lists that friends who flew other fighter types had been keeping, so I grabbed those. Same story when I later worked with some former F-14 and F-18 pilots. So that's basically what you have printed above, absent the more family-unfriendly ones I deleted.

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PostPosted: Mon May 11, 2020 7:25 am 
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Good ones Randy. Will have to come back when more time to read 'em all. Love hiyaka, have not used that one in a while. Forgive me if I missed it on your list but how about:

sounds like a plan
pickle
shack
tally
bullseye
zipper
SA
all planes are "the jet", sometimes even a Herk...
FUBAR
Reserve salute, i.e. a shrug
nordo
wait one
rolex
pipper

Here's an ignorant question from a non-ACC-er ... what's with the elbow pointing and avoidance of "head" vs cranium, etc?

Ken

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PostPosted: Mon May 11, 2020 11:56 am 
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Ken wrote:
Here's an ignorant question from a non-ACC-er ... what's with the elbow pointing and avoidance of "head" vs cranium, etc?


The "not pointing with your finger" thing has to do with a rule of dogfighting that you never point at anything unless you're trying to kill it.

The "box" and "head" game (in which a box is a body part and head is an activity) is an evolution of a Vietnam-era word game. As it went back then, one was not allowed to use those words unless they'd participated in the actual activity with a "round-eye female" in the previous 69 hours. Today it has morphed into an exaggerated way of not saying "taboo" words in a politically correct environment.

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PostPosted: Mon May 11, 2020 3:12 pm 
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Randy....

Thank you for sharing.

Those apply as well to my family, friends, spouse relationship, sex life as well........................

Great chuckle.

Made my day :drink3:


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PostPosted: Mon May 11, 2020 3:18 pm 
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Quote:
so I just started writing them down for posterity.


They are freaking hilarious and funny.

Keep them coming please.

A bored guy.....in his basement....


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PostPosted: Sun Oct 17, 2021 11:41 pm 
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I came across an old newspaper column from 1928 that includes a quote from J. J. Herrington, chief test pilot of the B. F. Mahoney Aircraft Corporation, that, while not exactly the same, sounds strikingly similar to the "old, bold pilots" cliché:
The secret may lie in a phrase of his let fall some years ago and since widely quoted, "I would rather be the oldest pilot than the most spectacular."

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