Engineering Funny.... “Marine Corps brass was insisting that the word ‘amphibious’ implied the ability to float…”

ACV Test Bed Vehicle

via Mobile Engineering.com

Early in my career, I was hired on as a contract worker at large company which had just received a multi-billion-dollar order to build amphibious, eight-wheel light armored vehicles for the U.S. marine corps. We toiled for several months on the project, burning through thousands of man hours before making an unfortunate discovery: our hull design was far too heavy.
Marine Corps brass was insisting that the word ‘amphibious’ implied the ability to float and in order to make that happen, we needed to eliminate a lot of weight from the design. Out of desperation management sent out a memo to everyone in engineering asking for suggestions on how to accomplish this.

This touched off a storm of anonymous suggestions such as drilling lightening holes in the hull, filling the tires with helium and my personal favorite, painting the hull with a lighter color. Management was not pleased with this response, but hey they asked!

Other "engineering funnies/mistakes/craziness" here. 

Maybe funny isn't the right word for this one but the solutions are pure idiocy/craziness and kinda funny!  Filling the tires with helium?  Are you shitting me!

On a more serious note it does illustrate what a heavy lift the USMC asked of engineers.  We want a combat vehicle that can float from ship to shore, yet be as capable as a land IFV/APC (or at least APPROACHING) that never has to cross deep puddles.