[Lancer44]

During my stay in the army I met a few individuals which were living proof that old joke about three kinds of intelligence: animal intelligence, human intelligence and military intelligence, is deadly right.

One day we had theoretical lecture about ballistics, barrel elevation angles etc, as always is in the artillery units and perhaps particularly AAA.
Our captain was from old soviet school, but tried to catch up with more modern technology. This time - it was 1978 - he produced electronic calculator and tried to calculate sinus of the barrel angle elevation.
He pressed buttons laboriously long after we finished our calculations and finally come with result that sinus of the angle was 2.5.
One of us - cadet, stood up and said:
- It's impossible, captain.
Captain looked at him and after a few seconds replied:
- In combat conditions sinus of the elevation angle can be much higher than normal!

Couple of the days later we received brand new AK-47s. (We called them Carbine AK - I never heard name AK-47 before my migration to Australia...).
Our captain entered area where we cleaned our new guns on the tables - they were preserved with sort of a very greasy sticky substance, very difficult to remove.
The same cadet, (friend of mine), stood to attention and asked for permission to ask question.
- Permission granted -said captain.
- This gun stock is made from very nice birch tree. Is it possible to replace it with stock made from genealogical tree?
Captain looked at him for more than 10 seconds before answering:
- In combat conditions - yes!

Cheers,

Lancer44