# Urban Legend? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 28, 2000, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legend/8162 "2000-02-28T20:40:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![spankboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@spankboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spankboy)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2000, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legend/8162/21 "2000-03-03T10:18:00Z")
Here’s two stories to add: 1. A friend of mine I was in the National Guard with told me about a fellow he served with in the Gulf that tagged a camel with a TOW missile on their Hummer. They strapped the carcass across the hood, and headed back to camp. As soon as the locals saw it, they went ape. The troopers had to make up a quick ‘Saddam’s guys did this’ story to get out of it. 2. My old college roomie went thru ROTC, and was in a National Guard Air Assault unit at Fort Lewis. One day, coming back from Yakima Firing Center (now Yakima Training Center), a Cobra pilot fired off some blanks at some livestock (sheep or cows, I forget). Some of them died of fright, and the farmer got the tail number of the ship. Fella was in a heap of trouble when he got back. ## If you’re good, I’ll tell you the 101st Airborne cotton field story… -sb “This is going to take a special blend of psychology and extreme violence.” ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2000, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legend/8162/22 "2000-03-03T13:28:00Z")
A friend of mine was a helicopter pilot in the 101st. Tell me about the cotton field and I’ll pass it on to her! Pleeeeeaaaaase? ---
**Author:** ![spankboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@spankboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spankboy)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2000, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legend/8162/23 "2000-03-03T13:50:00Z")
OK, no animals were harmed in this story, but… (hijack mode on) My old Sargeant Major told me this story about one of his stateside tours with the 101st (he was an E-5 or lower back then, prolly early 60’s). I guess they had some new S-3 Training officer at Brigade, and he was placed in charge of finding a drop zone for a Engineer (Heavy Equipment) Company. Well, he took a jeep out, and found a good soft dirt field to drop the troops on. Couple of months pass, and the jumpmasters open the doors on the transports…and look down…and something looks wrong, but they can’t quite figure it out. As the troopers land, they realize that the dirt field is now filled with blooming cotton! A sharecropper comes out of his shack, happy as heck, because the Army has to pay for the whole crop, and he doesn’t have to pick any! As he’s shaking hands with all the troops, everyone turns towards a whistling sound. Turns out one of the graders’ (remember, this was an _Engineer_ unit) chutes did not deploy correctly…and BLAM! lands right on top of the house. Sgt. Major said it was just like the cartoons-walls all blew out and everything. Now, this old fella is twice as happy, cuz he gets his money for the cotton, and a new house! He didn’t say what happened to the Training officer, but one can only assume… -sb * * * “This is going to take a special blend of psychology and extreme violence.” ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2000, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legend/8162/24 "2000-03-03T14:02:00Z")
Here are two stories I can’t confirm or debunk: 1. The lake beds at Edwards AFB fill up with water every year, up to a meter deep. A man was waterskiing on it, being towed by a UH-1. The participants faced disciplinary action. 2. Someone accidentally activated an ejection seat in an F-4 while the plane was in a hangar. It blew him through the overhead, killing him. This one is true: After the lakebed filled with water, someone put a large plywood shark’s fin into it just off of Rosamond Blvd. A couple of days later I brought my camera, but the wind had knocket it down. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2000, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legend/8162/25 "2000-03-04T20:59:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Do you recall when this strip was first run? > > I remember the story appearing in System V UNIX’s fortune (circa 1987). And Britain only stationed aircraft on the Falklands after the war, which would mean that Harrier/Falklands version (I’ve seen variations) was written after 1982. > > I’d always assumed that the fortune version predated the Bloom County mention. I did a quick search of my Bloom County books and couldn’t find this particular strip, so it’s probably in one of the few I don’t have. I see the big _Babylon_ book was published in '86; if one of the smaller books was also published that year it could be in there. I also don’t have any published before '84 or after '88. * * * “Age is mind over matter; if you don’t mind, it don’t matter.” -Leroy “Satchel” Paige ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2000, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legend/8162/26 "2000-03-05T16:28:00Z")
> [@](#): > > ) A friend of mine I was in the National Guard with told me about a fellow he served with in the Gulf that tagged a camel with a TOW missile on their Hummer. They strapped the carcass across the hood, and headed back to camp. Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? TOW’s are anti-tank missles. Wouldn’t it blow the camel all over Saudi Arabia? * * * –It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats. ---
**Author:** ![Ringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/779978/32.png) [@Ringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ringo)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2000, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legend/8162/27 "2000-03-05T16:48:00Z")
[Here](http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/penguin.htm)’s snopes on the penguins (attributes it to _Bloom County_). And, yeah, Diceman, I wondered how much camel was left also. ---
**Author:** ![spankboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@spankboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spankboy)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2000, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legend/8162/28 "2000-03-06T06:46:00Z")
I wondered about that meself, so I quizzed further. What happened is that it hit the poor camel before the minimum safety doodad was armed. So, you essentially have a four-foot long hunk of telephone pole going really fast in one direction. That would leave enough to strap to a hood. And, for the record, TOW’s are really cool. I saw my unit fire some in practice, using dumpsters for targets (why dumpsters, I don’t know). As they say down south, ‘they blowed up real good’. But, considering they were old, old TOW’s (mid-70’s vintage-it was either let the Guard fire 'em or destroy 'em) we had a couple break their guide wires and do funny things, which was…interesting. I wondered why the first sgt told me to stay in the command track, a ways back from the firing line…_g_. -sb * * * “This is going to take a special blend of psychology and extreme violence.” ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2000, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legend/8162/29 "2000-03-06T13:27:00Z")
Here is the Straight Dope on the kangaroo story mentioned earlier. It was forwarded to me be the Corporate Public Relations Officer of Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation in reply to my information request. Bold print was added by me. > [@](#): > > It’s probably too late to recall and correct the story (it’s already been forwarded to me by several different sources) but since you ask, here is the kernel of truth in it: I related this story as part of a talk on Simulation for Defence, at the Australian Science Festival on May 6th in Canberra. The Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter mission simulators built by the Synthetic Environments Research Facility in Land Operations Division of DSTO, do indeed fly in a fairly high fidelity environment which is a > 4000 sq km piece of real outback Australia around Katherine, built from elevation data, overlaid with aerial photographs and with 2.5 million realistic 3d trees placed in the terrain in those areas where the photographs indicated real trees actually exist. **For a bit of extra fun (and not for any strategic reason** like kangaroos betraying your cover!) our programmers decided to put in a bit of > animated wildlife. Since ModSAF is our Simulation tool, these were modelled on ModSAF’s Stinger detachments so that the associated detection model could be used to determine when a helo approached, and the behaviour invoked by such contact was set to ‘retreat’. Replace the visual model of the Stinger detachment in your stealth viewer with a visual model of a kangaroo (or buffalo…) and you have wildlife that moves away when approached. It is true that the first time this was tried in the lab, we discovered that we had forgotten to remove the weapons and the ‘fire’ behaviour. It is NOT true that this happened in front of a bunch of visitors (American or any other flavour). We dont normally try things for the first time in front of an audience! What I didnt relate in the talk is that since we were not at that stage interested in weapons, we had not set any weapon or projectile types, so what the kangaroos fired at us was in fact the default object for the simulation, which happened to be **large multicoloured beachballs**. I ususally conclude the story by reassuring the audience that we have now disarmed the kangaroos and it is again safe to fly in Australia. well, now you know… > 🙂 > Anne-Marie > Dr Anne-Marie Grisogono > Head, Simulation > Land Operations Division > DSTO [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/urban-legend/8162.md?page=1)