'Balls are going to be a little lopsided. I just gotta navigate a little bit for the shaft': Cockpit audio reveals conversation between two Navy 'whizz kid' pilots as they drew a penis in the sky
- Two junior officers based at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island used an EA-18G Growler to draw a penis in the sky over Washington state in November 2017
- The Navy's internal investigation uncovered how the idea came about
- In audio captured by the cockpit recording system, the lieutenants can be heard discussing their proposed masterpiece and marveling at the finished product
- They tried to erase the phallus after realizing it wouldn't go over well with others
- Neither of the offending lieutenants have been identified publicly, and their names were redacted from the copy of a report given to the Navy Times
- An executive officer described them as 'fine officers and capable aviators'
Two Navy pilots who drew a penis in the sky with their jet's white contrails never intended for the public to spot their phallic masterpiece, an investigation has revealed.
The junior officers with the 'Zappers' of Electronic Attack Squadron 130 had time to kill when they decided to use the unusually well-defined jet trail to draw a penis in the sky over Washington state on November 16, 2017, according to a report obtained by Navy Times.
A mother who lives near a training area for the squadron, which is based in western Washington at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, spotted the obscene art and submitted photos of it to a local news station.
The story took off as the photos went viral on social media, inspiring countless memes.
Two Navy pilots responsible for drawing a 'sky penis' with the jet's white contrails never intended for the public to spot their phallic masterpiece, an investigation has revealed
When Navy officials became aware of the incident they swiftly launched an investigation into the officers flying the EA-18G Growler jet.
The lieutenants, flying as 'Zapper 21', had taken off from Whidbey earlier that day with another jet.
The squadron's commanding officer described the pilot as an introverted 'whiz kid who managed our training and readiness with higher efficiency and effectiveness than anyone else I have seen in a squadron,', according to the investigation.
His co-pilot that day was an electronic warfare officer (EWO), who the commander said was his 'best junior officer'.
Neither of the offending lieutenants have been identified publicly, and their names were redacted from the report copy given to Navy Times.
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It was the EWO who first suggested drawing a penis in the sky, the report claimed.
'My initial reaction was no, bad,' the pilot wrote in a statement after the incident. 'But for some reason still unknown to me, I eventually decided to do it.'
The cockpit's video recording system captured the entirety of the conversation surrounding the project.
'Draw a giant penis,' the EWO says. 'That would be awesome.'
'What did you do on your flight?' the pilot replied. 'Oh, we turned dinosaurs into sky penises.'
'You should totally try to draw a penis,' the EWO said.
'I could definitely draw one, that would be easy,' the pilot said. 'I could basically draw a figure eight and turn around and come back. I'm gonna go down, grab some speed and hopefully get out of the contrail layer so they're not connected to each other.'
'Dude, that would be so funny,' the pilot said. 'Airliner's coming back on their way into Seattle, just this big [expletive]ing, giant penis. We could almost draw a vein in the middle of it too.'
The cockpit's video recording system captured audio of the officers discussing the art project. They can be heard erupting in a fit of laughter as they observe the final product
After completing the phallus, the pilot realized how prominent it was in the sky and went back and unsuccessfully tried to obscure it with more contrails before anyone noticed
The EWO can soon be heard reporting that the masterpiece was in the making.
'Balls are going to be a little lopsided,' the pilot said.
'Balls are complete,' he said moments later. 'I just gotta navigate a little bit over here for the shaft.'
'Which way is the shaft going?' the EWO asked.
'The shaft will go to the left,' the pilot answered.
'It's gonna be a wide shaft,' the EWO noted.
'I don't wanna make it just like 3 balls,' the pilot said.
'Let's do it,' the EWO said. 'Oh, the head of that penis is going to be thick.'
As he finished up the drawing, the pilot said: 'To get out of this, I'm gonna go like down and to the right, and we'll come back up over the top and try to take a look at it.'
'I have a feeling the balls will have dissipated by then,' his partner replied.
When the full image came into view the officers erupted in a fit of laughter, taking photos that they would later delete as they realized their prank had been discovered.
'Oh yes, that was f***ing amazing,' the pilot said. 'This is so obvious.'
'Dude, I'm amazed that this stayed,' the EWO added.
A pilot in the other jet that took off at the same time soon radioed in to congratulate the officers for their 'amazing artwork'.
In the statement after the fact, the offending pilot wrote: 'Soon after, I realized the extent of our actions, that the contrails were remaining longer than predicted.
'I remarked that we needed to take steps to try to obfuscate it. I flew one pass over it essentially trying to scribble it out with my contrails. That pass was ineffective.'
Before they got the chance to eradicate the penis, the plane needed to head back to base as it was running out of fuel.
The offending lieutenants took off from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Washington (above)
Soon after the jet landed, the deputy commodore of Electronic Attack Wing Pacific soon contacted the squadron's executive officer (XO) with photos of the phallic-shaped object that had been snapped from the ground.
The XO confirmed that squadron jets had been in the area and asked the lieutenants if anything unusual occurred during their flight that day, at which point they immediately confessed and apologized for their childish actions.
'They both apologized and were at once remorseful,' the XO wrote in a summary.
Commander of Naval Air Forces, Vice Adm Mike Shoemaker (above), handed down a light punishment a month after the incident
One of the lieutenants said he 'deleted the sky drawing photographs from his phone out of shame and as an attempt at damage control to prevent further accidental spread of the photographs', the report claims.
The squandron's commanding officer was 'immediately furious' when he learned about the incident, but because neither of the lieutenants had prior disciplinary records, an investigating officer recommended that they only receive 'non-punitive letters of instruction'.
'While the sky writing conducted by [the lieutenants' was crude, immature, and unprofessional, it was not premeditated or planned and not in keeping with their character demonstrated prior to the incident,' the investigator wrote.
'Even so, it has caused the United States Navy severe embarrassment in the public arena and jeopardizes the strategic narrative that underpins the justification of the flight hour program.'
The XO defended the lieutenants, calling them both 'fine officers and capable aviators' despite the prank.
'They 100 percent need to be held accountable, but if they are allowed to continue in naval aviation this is not a mistake they will repeat,' he wrote. 'Minus the current circumstances, they have never given me a reason to doubt their trustworthiness or their resolve to be officers in the Navy.'
A Boeing EA-18G Growler like the one used to draw the massive sky penis over Whidbey Island in Washington state is pictured above (file photo)
