Not the First Time

Army 1st Lieutenant Joseph Yabut is all the rage right now for news sources considering what transpired Tuesday evening. The young officer took law enforcement on a 60 mile chase while driving an M577 armored personnel carrier and tweeting while he did it. However. This is not the first time something like this has happened.In fact, there are a few stories like this that have happened and we've got to say, without encouraging anyone else to do something like this, that 1st Lieutenant Yabut is still on amateur hour when compared to these other gentlemen. We happen to still think he was just lost on the Land Nav course.The day that this first incident happened, well how appropriate. On July 4th, 1986 (the writer was not yet even a month old), Lance Corporal Howard A. Foote Jr. decided that today was the day his dream of flying a jet, would come true. He climbed up into the cockpit of a supposedly deadlined (not working) A-4 Skyhawk (pic below), and started the ol' girl up. On that 4th of July morning on Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, an aircraft mechanic, a lowly, but surely salty Lance Corporal took off. He was flying...and fly he did. He performed several high speed aerial manuevers like barrel rolls and loops and what have you, then decided his fun was done and with a bit of difficulty, landed the aircraft back at El Toro. He was most certainly arrested. However the story doesn't end poorly for our intrepid Lance Corporal, he only spent four and a half months in the brig and recieved an Other than Honorable Discharge. Well done E-3 Mafia/Lance Corporal Underground, well done.[caption id="attachment_17785" align="alignnone" width="750"]

A Douglas A-4 Skyhawk formally with Marine Attack Squadron 324 attached to Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, Calif., fires a rocket Sept. 4, 1976. There were a total of only 2,960 A-4s made before the Douglas Aircraft Company stop manufacturing them. (Photo courtesy of the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum)[/caption]The next story we have for you comes from the Army. Private First Class Robert K. Preston stole a Bell UH-1 Iroquis helicopter, and flew it to the White House. Where he hovered above the building for several minutes. Just wait, it gets better. Preston had been in training to become a helicopter pilot, but washed out. So what better way to convince folks you shouldn't have washed out than by showing off with a helicopter. How did he show off? Well for starters he was able to get up and off the ground from Fort Meade and all the way to Washington D.C.. Two helicopters chased him, but through his skill as a pilot forced one to land. The White House eventually got tired of his shenanigans and shot at him as he hovered above. He was injured and then landed his bird on the south lawn of the White House. He got off relatively light as well with a one year prison sentence, of which he'd already served half, and two months hard labor, then a discharge.

It's not the first time, and we're sure it won't be the last time, given the proclivity for such...grievous and tragic shenanigans.