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Army phrases that became civvie ones

Humber Pigs could let rip with gun shot like backfires, I remember a couple of 'shooting' incidents in Bogside and Strabane that turned out to be farting Pigs.

It’s alleged landies were capable of the same. If it ever happened it certainly never happened in Banbridge passing strolling members of the RUC.
 
Ditto our Squadron, day after we got back from Omagh. We finished signing over our "new" Scorpion's kit. Smudge jumped in, started it up, revved it right it and took his foot right off the gas.

BANG BANG BANG it backfired, and then the squadron got back up and dusted itself off.
Musta looked like a bowling alley
 
I'd always understood it that 'crack and thump' would only come from a round travelling faster than the speed of sound - the crack being the sonic boom as it passes overhead (hopefully) and the thump being the sound of the round being fired, travelling somewhat slower at just the speed of sound? I suppose also that flash and bang may be the difference between speed of light and speed of sound?

Well, as a ickle cadet on Kingsbury ranges, that was what a big scary man shouted at us (he was RA and preferred his ears unadorned with the Products of Peltor) and it's stuck with me ever since.

I may have misinformed a significant number of people over the years... :(
He may have been Mutt'n'Jeff, and a f#ckinggunner to boot, but he was correct
 
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I'd always understood it that 'crack and thump' would only come from a round travelling faster than the speed of sound - the crack being the sonic boom as it passes overhead (hopefully) and the thump being the sound of the round being fired, travelling somewhat slower at just the speed of sound? I suppose also that flash and bang may be the difference between speed of light and speed of sound?

Well, as a ickle cadet on Kingsbury ranges, that was what a big scary man shouted at us (he was RA and preferred his ears unadorned with the Products of Peltor) and it's stuck with me ever since.
I may have misinformed a significant number of people over the years... :(

You are correct about the 'Crack and Thump' and of the 'Flash to Bang' You see the flash in the distance then you hear the Bang which has traveled the distance, a Compass bearing taken by a Arty FOO will give direction. Several compass bearings taken from a Battalion Front, will almost pinpoint the nasty little Jerry.
 
During the early part of WW2 British and German personnel who washed up on the shores of the Irish Free State were interned in the Curragh. It was all very civilised and the chaps of both sides were allowed out of camp on parole. One enterprising RAF chap provided himself with a workman's overalls and a hammer and walked north along a railway line, tapping the line at intervals with the hammer as if he was a railway worker. After a few days he was back in the UK but as he had broke his parole he was returned south immediately. More to do with the impact on his fellow internees than gentlemanly feelings.

The pilot who escaped by breaking parol was Roland 'bud' Wolfe, an American spitfire pilot in eagle squadron,
His spitfire came down in a bog in Donegal and was recently excavated for the BBC series dig ww2 ,
His scam was leaving the camp after signing parole, quickly turning back saying he'd forgot his gloves,
Then signing back in to get them,
He then walked past the parole hut and waved his gloves, thus suggesting he'd just nipped back in for them, but forgetting to sign parole as he left for 2nd time,
His argument was that by signing out, then signing in, then leaving for a 2nd time but not signing parole made it a legitimate escape because by signing in he hadn't broken parole,
Not sure on this bit but I think he headed to the British embassy in Dublin to arrange discrete transport north,
The Irish kicked up a bit of a stink about the sly underhand way he escaped and cancelled parole for all prisoners both German and allied so for the allies to save face he was deemed to have broken parole and sent back
 
Not looking so odd any more . . . .

Depends on situation and location - I freely cough to being false-alarmed by car backfires, fireworks etc whilst patroling in NI, but not at 'home'. Where I come from people's first reaction when they hear something fall off the back of a lorry is to run towards it, not to hit the deck.
 
Depends on situation and location - I freely cough to being false-alarmed by car backfires, fireworks etc whilst patroling in NI, but not at 'home'. Where I come from people's first reaction when they hear something fall off the back of a lorry is to run towards it, not to hit the deck.
Strangely, the second time I read that, my inner voice had somehow acquired a Scouse accent.
 
Strangely, the second time I read that, my inner voice had somehow acquired a Scouse accent.

The noise of something falling off the back of a lorry in Scouseland isn't loud enough to alarm anyone, less distance to fall from a vehicle that's already had it's wheels nicked.
 
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