Leaving your mobile phone behind in a pub is a major inconvenience at the best of times – unless you have a spare helicopter handy, as these marines show.

Staff at the Thirsty Whale pub in Bar Harbour, Maine were amazed to see two helicopters – one Bell AH-1W SuperCobra and a Bell UH-1Y Venom – fly to their location in a mission to retrieve a lost mobile phone.

In the video posted to YouTube, one of the helicopters is seen landing in a nearby football field, while the other flies above in support.

According to the Mount Desert Islander, a caller from a nearby municipal airport asked if they could send a helicopter to the pub. Staff agreed, thinking a small aircraft used for medical evacuations would be deployed.

The pub sent an employee outside to record the helicopter arriving but were surprised to see instead two military-grade airships. An aircrewman then jumped out and retrieved the phone from a member of staff.

This isn't the first case of US military staff crossing the line while on the job.

Recently, Navy aircraft flew above the skies of Washington state and a drew a giant penis using jet contrails.

Local were aghast by the obscene sky art, which forced a Navy spokesperson to apologise: "The Navy holds its aircrew to the highest standards and we find this absolutely unacceptable, of zero training value and we are holding the crew accountable."