Most memorable private/cherries prank!

We put a guy in foul weather gear and gave a boathook and sent him up to the foc'sle (front of the ship) and told him that he had mail buoy watch and that a helicopter would fly over and drop the ship's mail into the water and he had to grab it with the boathook before it sank.  We told him if he let the mail sink and the crew found out they would come to voice their displeasure (cough, cough, wink, wink).  He stood up there for two or more hours until the Bosun asked him what he was doing . . . damn we were mean!  LOL

I worked on an airfield and used to get boots to tell me A: what a "Bravo Alpha 1100 November" with a "S.T. ring" was and B: where to find it on the airfield.

Always loved the ID10T Form request. Change the time on the Zulu clock, get some Chem-light batteries... Keys to the dropzone... There are a lot of them actually. Anyone ever get anyone good with one of these? I had a guy going from officer to officer looking for a way to change the Zulu clocks and they just played along.

I once low-crawled across the floor about 20 meters to paint on a buddy's boots in white out (This was back in the black boot days).

I once got a friend's cover, stuffed it into a coke can (Cut the top off with my leatherman as smoothly as possible, soaked it with water, sealed it, and froze it. At the end of the day, he had a coke can on his desk and he had to nuke his hat out of the solid cylinder of ice before he could leave :)

While not technically a prank one of the funnest things I ever recall from my time in the service involved a SP4 and a fruit roll up. It was about the time they (the fruit roll ups) first came out. They were tasty, handy and I liked taking them to the field with me when we went out training. Well on this particular training exercise our new SP4 saw me eating one and asked what they were, I handed him one and told him to try it. I walked off at this point and didn't see him until later that evening.  When I did I asked how he liked it and he said it tasted like plastic and he couldn't see how I could eat them like I did. It took me a moment to figure it out and when I did I asked him how he ate it. He replied that he took it right out of the paper tube it was in and took a bite. I said so then you didn't actually roll it open and take out the plastic sheet it was attached too? The look on his face was priceless. You just gotta love a speedy 4.

One of my favorites was when I was in a mechanized infantry unit. I was a gunner on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle before I commissioned. They would have a new private perform the boom mic test during our pmcs. This consisted of having them yell BOOM into the end of the barrel. They would tell the private if he could be heard from inside it meant the barrel was fully operational. There was one guy they had screaming from the top of his lungs and kept saying we couldn't hear him. He could be heard and seen by the entire motor pool. This guy continued yelling BOOM even after a crowd gathered around him.

We would also tell new guys to the ship to get 100 feet of chow line or water line but one of my favs was telling them to get a BT Punch, the joke entails sending them to the biggest, strongest Boiler Tech on the ship who would then punch them in the shoulder, hence the term BT Punch!

Other than the old skyhook and canopy lights tricks, I learned why we always got the lousy c-rations even though the box was always upside down.  Then passed it on as was only proper...and watched the cherries complain as we enjoyed the "good" ones.

So while its not really a prank, but our cherry jumpers on thier first jump after the Basic Airborne Course, often wore a red kevlar, with a green stem/shark fin attached to it.  They also ended up with hostess cherry pies in their pockets, and often their faces painted with red lipstick.

I was walking by in the motor pool and a180lbs and 6.5" lt was testing shock absorbers too on a 113. Same lieutenant, a few weeks later was painting pink chalk "x"s on the are or of an M60, he was checking and marking soft spots. I yelled at him to knock it of before our old CSM got there.

I remember when I first joined Smoke PLT, I had to the the exhaust sample in the field while being attached to FA. When we got back from the field we got several new soldiers and had them going around the track with a hammer and a piece of chalk making sure the M113A3 had no soft spots. If they found soft spots, by carefully listening for hollow sounds by pounding the hammer against the track, they would proceed to mark it with an X.
Fun times at hood!!