| :roflmao:
This is one of the funniest things I've ever read. Flipper looks like he saw some action anyway.....of the female kind and decided AWOL looked a better prospect. Guess human males and dolphins think alike.
Freedom and Victory
Fred Hooper
US Navy's 'Flipper' goes AWOL
March 31, 2003
AUSTRALIAN military divers yesterday questioned the effectiveness of the US Navy's mine-clearing dolphins, revealing one had disappeared for two days.
The polite way to express their scepticism about the mine-clearing skills of the dolphins is to question their reliability and cost-efficiency, but one diver spoke more plainly yesterday.
"Flipper's f----ed, mate," he said.
"The dolphins have had all this amazing publicity but as soon as they put one in the water it shot through. There's a war going on and Flipper goes AWOL (absent without leave)."
The diver said the dolphin returned two days later.
But in the interim, the US Navy brought in another dolphin by helicopter.
"That meant some of our gear got bumped off the flight," he said.
The handlers of the five dolphins at work in the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr confirmed yesterday that one of their charges, a male named Tacoma, did disappear when put in the water to go to work.
"Two days later we found him in the same spot where we put him in the water," said Lieutenant Robert Greene, the officer in charge of the M-7 series of mine-clearing dolphins.
Tacoma was yesterday resting in his holding pool with the Navy's oldest dolphin, 33-year-old Makay.
Makay has been more diligent in Iraq, perhaps learning from a painful experience when he, too, took off from duty once in Florida.
A shark attacked him during his self-declared holiday, leaving him with scars on his back.
Lt Greene said the dolphins had been a great success in Iraq in using their sonar to detect potential mines and placing markers on them to guide human divers to the targets.
AAP | |
