#TomcatTails Number 71
#TomcatTuesday
"God Created Aircraft Mechanics So That Pilots Can Have Heroes Too."
Professions that rely on operating highly complex equipment have a unique relationship between those that operate the equipment and those that maintain and repair it. The former’s life depends on the latter’s performance, accuracy, diligence, and attention to detail. Accordingly and as you’d imagine, Naval Aviators have a VERY close relationship with the maintainers that keep them flying and flying safely.
As a group, Naval Aviators are hard to impress. We work with some of the best and brightest this country has to offer, up and especially down the chain of command, doing the most challenging and amazing things.
PAO: “Hey man! You wanna meet [insert some ‘famous person’ here]?!?”
Aviator: “Nah, I’d rather spend time with a 2nd Class Mech that smells like JP5.”
So that opening quote really hits the mark on how Aviators feel about OUR Maintainers. My Dad taught me a deep and abiding respect for Sailors from a very young age having started as one himself. “They work four times as hard as you do, get paid a fourth as much as you, and your life depends on ‘em.” He also taught me that all a hard-charging Sailor wants is the mission, the tools, some top cover, and then get out of their way. My time in the Navy revealed this to be the truth.
Our culture talks a lot about “heroes” and tends to overuse that word all too frequently. What our fellow civilian citizens consider a hero and what we in the military do are very different. My heroes? Every Sailor I’ve ever worked with that fought through 18 hour days, endless bloodshot eyes and exhaustion. Then got up after 4 hours of sleep and did it all over again. Through months of deployment. One of the most grueling lifestyles imaginable that would bring most Americans to their knees in a day, but our Sailors kept at it with energy, drive, and dedication (and bitching and griping but that’s to be expected!).
So here’s a couple of my heroes from back in the day. I could probably write about hundreds of them, but these two represent all those heroes I had chance to work with.
While In the VF-24 Renegades at Miramar, we had a Sailor named AMH1 Brown. “Charlie Brown” we called him. He was an Aviation Structural Mechanic (Hydraulics). Really tall dude (6’5”) that had a tough time when deployed (had to duck a LOT while walking around the boat). At any rate, he was a combination of Yoda and Gandalf. A walking encyclopedia with the ability to repair a Tomcat just by laying hand on it.
If you had a hydraulic issue on the jet (there were a lot of them), the Maintainers would hook up a Jenny (energizes the hydraulics without starting the jet) and Charlie Brown would start his walk around the jet. He’d just walk around looking at it, listening. He’d tell the Sailor in the cockpit during the maintenance turn to move the controls, and he’d keep walking, listening.
Then he’d zero in on an area of the jet, walk over and lay hands on it, signaling for another control wipe out. Nine times out of ten, he’d nod his head and signal to cut off the Jenny. He’d found it. “Yup, number four spoiler actuator on the left wing” or whatever. Amazing. Not surprisingly, he eventually made Master Chief, the highest Enlisted rank you can achieve.
Later, I was the Maintenance Officer in the VF-154 Black Knights in Atsugi, Japan. On one occasion, a new Sailor was checking in at the Maintenance Desk (after traveling for about 18 hours) and overheard me talking to the Maintenance Master Chief about a specific problem with a jet that was being worked on in the hangar.
Missile station 1B, the left lower shoulder station, wouldn’t properly interface with a Phoenix. This was a problem because for our combat load-out we’d carry the LANTIRN Pod on 8B on the right, LBGs in the belly, and single Phoenie-Bomb on 1B. We were deploying in a month or so and it was important to get this problem fixed.
Our guys had been working on it for weeks no one could figure it out. He walked over (in civilian clothes still) and said he’d recently had a similar gripe on a jet at VX-9 in Pt. Mugu and asked if he could take a look. I told him to take a couple days to rest up after travel and we can check it out then. He said “I’m fine, Sir. Had plenty of sleep on the plane. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a look.”
30 minutes later he’s on top of the jet, still in civilian clothes, mind you. They’d cracked open some access panels on top of the wing/shoulder station and this dude was literally upside down and diving into the area over the station with his legs sticking out. After 15 minutes of grunts and groans, he emerges and say’s “Got it!”
Turns out the same gripe involved a little-known (and impossible to see) cannon plug that had to be found “blind” (by feel). Sure enough, he’d fixed it.
So are my heroes football players, musicians, movie stars, politicians? Hardly. I’d trade ‘em all for one hard-charging Mark 1/Mod 0 United States Navy Sailor. Any day of the week.
***See the Aircraft Mechanics Creed in the first Comment***