What's the best prank you were ever a part of?

Ummmm... having been on submarines, there were always pranks going on Sonar/esm loved to pick on OOW; "hold Hammer 4 bearing 224""Whats a Hammer 4?""Pounding nails" was a favorite. But sometimes It got turn around. A new machinist was assigned by a Senior chief to get 10' of chow line; he return with 5 guys in tow, telling them the Senior Chief wanted them.
One time, some persons who shall remain forever Unnamed, were peeved with the CO, so they stole his stateroom door. The CO then took the XO's stateroom door. XO puts up blanket, cannot find stateroom door even after 3 weeks of searching boat while at sea. XO got too comfortable with blanket, soooo the door was returned but blanket left up. Glad we were not on station when XO had collision with stateroom door as it could be heard throughout the boat.
Poking holes in the ocean gets boring. EOOW noticed that people were starting to doze. Made the engineering spaces all man the sound power phones and held singalongs with each station using their own song and critiquing them; ERLL won with the "Hershey Highway" to the tune from the "Beverly Hillbillies.
These were some of the milder type of things going on; The water wars were down right, um, wet. I think the only person who did not get wet was the CO; I think we were afraid of how he might get us back w/o using his rank or position.

I think this might have been a draw. I was a young SGT and part of a team where I was the lowest ranking guy, but treated by the group as just one of the guys. We spent a lot of time on the road visiting ADA battery Tacsites either for training or mock Tactical Evaluations which were big deasl. One of the guys was a SFC named Dino, who was one of those guys who would just keep on a schtick until he had everybody howling with laughter. HIs wife bought him a very fancy ash tray which if nothing else dates this as a long time ago. My Lieutenant was a one of those hands-on science/engineering types and among other things he had gotten really good at taking the charge out of M60Blanks and saving it because "we might need it sometime, Farrell-Man,' to which I'd normally reply "Great LT, I've got a meeting with (and fill in the blank with whomever he really didn't want to talk to). Well, we got to the point where we all had film cases filled with the stuff. It was "fun" to spike ashtrays with a bit of this stuff. Anyway, Dino showed up one day and he was very over the top; I came back from the meeting (they were real, and I didn't want my Lieutenant to talk to these guys either) and sat down over at my desk. There was a W4, a W3, a Captain who was supposedly in charge, but with that sort Warrant Officer power in the 1977, he was happy to go meetings he didn't want the Chiefs to go to. I Turns out, I learned later that they spiked Dino's ash tray which was very narrow at the top but the whole thing was huge. One of these guys would sprinkle some of gunpowder and they stir it up in the ashes. Somehow, he didn't rub out a cigarette in the spiked stuff.

I was skipping lunch to catch on travel documents so I stayed in the office. Dino had been late so he was trying catch up and he was in the office across the corridor where the ADA guys worked from. All of o sudden there was a blam! I thought he'd fallen down somehow, and got up to laugh at hima nd help him or give first aid short of CPR or whatever was necessary...

He was standing, staring at his desk top which was smoldering and really all messed up...his hands were shaking and I believe he was grabbing his chest because of intermittent pains. I asked what happened and he said he put out a cigarette and the desk exploded...I said OK and let me get you a cup of coffee man and sit and down.

So, obviously, I was the guy who put all the gunpowder in his ash tray. Or at least, the rest of the team convinced him of that. Since he made a big deal out being "Sicilian" and quoting stuff like "Revenge is a dish best eaten cold!" and stuff like that, so I wasn't aware of any curse of revenge. I was off on a weeklong evaluation someplace else on NATO's dime, and got back on a Friday afternoon. Most of the HQ was gone but I went up to check my desk and find my mail and BS with S3 Sergeant Major for a bit. It was winter time, so I was cold, damp, and just wanted to go home. So, as I was going through my stuff, I lit a cigarette, and BOOM...ashtrray was cracked, little stuff moved around and some of the papers in my outbox were on fire. I was too tired to react so I just put out the flames, muttered some curses directed at my " "Buddies", gathered up the stuff that needed to go home with me and realized that the SGM and the S3 were looking at me in a bit of shock. Well, in fairness, they didn't know the stuff that we got into in the field.

"What's wrong?" "What the hell was that SGT Farrell?" "Oh, SFC Wood said he had something I needed to see and I guess that was it." "Are you guys playing around with demo?" "Demo? Do either of the Chiefs strike you as the sort of leaders that would let us play with demolitions?" Ok, you're ight. Have a good weekend..."

On Monday, Dino was constantly being asked by the S3 and any other officer who thought ti was funny that I hadn't reacted at all where he learned to blow things up with any one noticing...Good times.

1st day aboard the USS Inchon in a transatlantic crossing, we (the embarked Marines) still haven't learned our way around. Ran into a USNA classmate who made the prank happen.

When the BnCdr was aboard another ship for a conference, the wall panel that had the door to his state room was removed and a solid wall panel was put in place.

I was an AFRTS Engineer. I was stationed at Ft. Greely. We were one of the last two TV stations that were B&W. We were budgeted to convert to color, but the Base Information Officer was telling everyone that it was impossible t convert the station, with a bunch of made up excuses.
I was tired of phone calls, wanting to know if he was lying.
1: You can't put a color antenna on a B&W tower, We already had a color antenna. They stopped making B&W antennas in the '50s.
2: There isn't enough power for the new equipment. It used less power that the old B&W Equipment.
Needless too say, I was ed up. Even though we had no color equipment, I mad a 35mm slide that said 'AFRTS Channel 8' on two lines. I borrowed a Heathkit color bar generator (That still exists) and transmitted our station ID in color, at the start of our 6:00PM newscast. 15 seconds later, Lt. Broushard was n the phone screaming, "Soldier! You just made a fool of me!" I replied, but sir? You claim to be a self made man!" He never spoke to me, again.