Submarine Pranks And Unintended Consequences

I always loved good-natured pranks, but found that as the Eng I had to be very careful about not going too far. When I was doing NewCon on Connecticut, we had an electrician get a mild shock; he tagged it out correctly, and verified there was no AC voltage. Unfortunately, since this was new construction, the shipyard had hooked it up wrong, and there was a live DC line going into the cabinet, so he got bit. We filled out the Safety Center report and all the electricians learned to check for both types of voltage until the rest of the time we were in the yards.

When the next compilation of incidents message came out from the Navy Safety Center just as I was writing my Night Orders, I decided to have some fun with it. I printed out the message and put it in Word, then added a "bonus" lesson learned at the end that went something like this:

"Last but not least, on one new construction submarine, some EM was so stupid that he got shocked by DC in an AC cabinet. What a maroon! Only the dumbest electricians could get shocked by the wrong type of voltage..."

I sent the Night Orders down to the boat, and about 15 minutes later got a call from the EDO saying that we had some pretty pissed-off nukes down there. I explained what happened, and he got everyone calmed down. When I came in the next morning, my desk and chair were a mass of EB Green.

Anyone have any good stories about pranks you've seen that have gone awry?