Wed Jan 06, 2021 7:59 am
#1818270
I was lucky enough to work with the only person who ever said “huge cock and balls” to Lakenheath Radar. He’ll tell you he didn’t – he did, though.
As most of you will know, one of the skills to pick up when you’re going to spend your time in the air, is pattern recognition. It helps in all sorts of ways, particularly with navigation. You can always make it back to Wattisham, for instance, if you can see Scotty Dog Wood which is, unsurprisingly, a wood – whose real name I don’t know – which is shaped like a Scotty dog. It even helps at night, for example, you knew that you were on track for Lowestoft when the Pissing Pixie passed just down your right-hand side - that was the town of Halesworth because the shape of the town’s streetlights do, indeed, look like a pixie and the arching stream of yellow sodium streetlights make it look as though he is relieving himself on the village of Holton.
One day, I was flying in the back of the police helicopter and our unnamed hero was joined in the front by one of my colleagues. On a longish transit to a job in Cambridgeshire we were discussing these patterns and learning from each other’s observations. Our hero pilot mentioned a small copse and avenue of trees located in mid-Suffolk which, to use his phrase, looked like a "huge cock and balls". Immediately after he had said this an American voice on the radio said:
“Police three-five, say again.”
We were in contact with the United States Air Force air traffic controllers at Lakenheath and it was entirely clear to all of us, even if only two of us were willing to admit it, that our pilot had accidentally knocked the transmit switch when he had said, “huge cock and balls”.
He studiously ignored them whilst steadfastly denying the obvious but Americans are made of sterner stuff.
“Police three-five, Lakenheath Approach, say again your last message, sir, it was broken.”
I don’t know what he said back to them as, by now, I was fighting for breath and could not see through the tears streaming from my eyes. I had to unstrap my safety harness to take off my jacket because I was so hot from laughing so much. I was gasping for oxygen and really wondered if I might actually die from laughing. Every time I recovered and managed to suck in a lungful of air, our hero would say, “I didn’t say huge cock and balls to Lakenheath Radar” and I’d be off again. I have no idea what the job was we were going to.
Last edited by JAFO on Wed Jan 06, 2021 10:14 am, edited 1 time in total.