25 large Pepperoni with cheese, 25 orders of hot wings, 15 2-liter bottles of Pepsi, ....
What is the difference between a sea story and a fairy tale? A fairy tale starts with "once upon a time", and a sea story starts with "no sh..." errr...sorry, it turns out I can't tell a sea story in a family friendly forum, so I will just tell a tale that happened to be at sea...
I had a life long friend, knew this guy as youngsters (how we both ended up in the same job in the same Navy, having lost contact years before is another story), on another ship independent steaming in the same general area we were in. Both ships were scheduled to pull into a little Pacific port the same day. We both happened to have the mid watch on the Echo Whiskey net. As "practice" I coded up a message to him as to where and when we should meet ashore.
The basic format of that message would have been almost indistinguishable from what people glom on as EAMs and FDMs today. Of course the callsigns were our rotating tactical calls, and those were a bit different from today. But the rest, "for" station, group count, message, and authentication, could have been one of the airmen on HF-GCS.
The moral of this story that occurred at sea is...everything you hear that sounds like an EAM or an FDM, or is encrypted, is not of value...it could just be directions to a cold beer...although maybe not on HF-GCS
And sorry Larry, being a black shoe, you know, real Navy (and small boys to boot), I was (SW), not (AW)
For those with no humor detector in your basic kit, that part about "real Navy" was a joke.
T!