To you 12:30 am types, this is the same thing. It’s just easier to say balls thirty. This time frame happens to fall with in the infamous, and hated, balls to 4 watch, 0000-0400. Or midnight to 4:00 am. I never did like that watch, also called midwatch. It was really boring and creepy around the ship that late.

Yes, I said creepy. Everyone is sleeping and most of the extra lights are turned off. In some locations there are red lights turned on instead of the white lights. The red lights just added to the creepiness of the ship. Back in the aft horseshoe when checking the #3 generator you just felt weird. I’ll leave the ghost story for tomorrow maybe.

Back to today’s phrase. Of course the term balls comes from eh zeros in front of the thirty. Sailors use this a good deal of times when talking about anything with zeros in the number. This way it is easier to communicate and allows for fewer mistakes. On a flight deck when the ATC wants “Triple ball to the Cat” He is asking for plane 000 to the catapult.

This has followed through to even civilian companies. The Lockheed reps that come to my place of employment refer to things as Triple ball, quad ball, 6 ball. For some reason the main spec for the JSF starts with 4 zero’s. So of course they call it quad ball and we know which one they mean.

But referring to zeros as balls should not be confused with the AC/DC songs, “Balls to the Wall.”