FOD - Foreign Object Damage - the anathema of jet aircraft, and something to continuously be on the watch for if you work anywhere around anything that goes on, in or near a plane.
Herbert Brink, also known as Herb Drink, Staff Sgt. U.S. Air Force RAF Bentwaters. Herb had been in the Army where he'd been shot twice - by his own troops. He decided to join the Air Force because they don't issue Air Force people with guns. Herb was basically incompetent, and once that I realized that he was also functionally illiterate I realized I could do whatever I wanted around him and because he simply could not write me up since he was incapable of writing. One time I even call them chickenshit right to his face. He was a thin man of medium build, smoked like a chimney, lived in the barracks and got drunk a lot. He wore little thin glasses.
Herbert Brink, also known as Herb Drink, Staff Sgt. U.S. Air Force RAF Bentwaters. Herb had been in the Army where he'd been shot twice - by his own troops. He decided to join the Air Force because they don't issue Air Force people with guns. Herb was basically incompetent, and once that I realized that he was also functionally illiterate I realized I could do whatever I wanted around him and because he simply could not write me up since he was incapable of writing. One time I even call them chickenshit right to his face. He was a thin man of medium build, smoked like a chimney, lived in the barracks and got drunk a lot. He wore little thin glasses.
One night
I was working night shift and we had an exercise kick off at about 4 AM. When we had an exercise we had to bring in
all of our training pods. Normally we
kept about eight pods programmed with training settings so they could practice actually using the pods on training flights. When we had a war exercise we had to pull those pods
in and reprogram them with combat settings, which was about a two-hour evolution that involved pulling panels and circuit cards, then reinstalling them and giving everything a quick check.
When the balloon went up at 4 AM, we started reprogramming pods. We had to open the panels for cards,
physically change quaternary word settings, and then put them back
together. Herb was running around making
himself useful, putting pods back together and inspecting them. Herb was our nightshift seven-level inspector, and had to sign off each pod as it left the shop as certified for light. We got all of these pods generated in record
time and sent them out to the flight line to be loaded onto the aircraft.
As the
recall went out and the day shift showed up, we prepared to hand the shop over to
them. Part of this was a tool
inventory. There was a missing
screwdriver. We searched everywhere in
that shop for that screwdriver, under all the consoles, went back in the pod barn
and inspected all of the storage racks.
We finally came to the realization that that screwdriver was not in the shop,
which means that it probably got buttoned up inside one of those pods.
This was
not going to make the Colonel happy.
Here he's trying to generate aircraft as fast as he can and we come
around behind him and red X his aircraft, because we don't know where a
screwdriver is
We
checked the expediter; four of the pods have been uploaded onto aircraft on RAF
Bentwaters. That was easy. We just walked out on the line where those
aircraft were and pulled the panels. We
pulled the panels off of all four of the pods on base and didn't find anything. The other two pods that we had turned that
morning had been sent over to RAF Woodbridge. After the branch chief and finished his
hysterics in his office, he sent us to
the sensor shop to borrow their truck to go over to Woodbridge and looked for the screwdriver. John Turner (JT) and I went. JT was driving. We got over to Woodbridge and JT said, "I know my way
around the Bentwaters line, but I don't know anything about this place. How do we start looking for where these pods
are?"
I noticed
that the truck we were driving had a radio in it.
ECM shop didn't have a radio so we didn't have a call sign, and I wasn't
about to use sensor's call sign. I
grabbed the radio mike, made up a call sign on the fly and said,
"Red one, Weasel one." JT choked with laughter at my audacity.
"Go
ahead."
"Yeah,
lookin' for an ECM pod number 640, can you tell me what aircraft that's uploaded
on?"
"Roger
that's on tail number 441, tab 20, uh. . . .whoever the hell you are." JT busted up laughing.
We went
over to 20 and pulled the panels off that pod. JT pulled the really long panels over the high band section off and that screwdriver fell
out. My jaw hit the ground just about
the same time the screwdriver did. I was speechless.
Later that day the shop chief called me up. Wanted to tell me that one of the pods I had worked on hadn't had the low voltage power supply connector screwed down. Big fuckin' deal, I thought. But still, it was a screw up. I told him that as long as I get judged on the same metric as Herb was, I didn't have a problem with whatever disciplinary action they had for me. That was the last I heard of it.
Later that day the shop chief called me up. Wanted to tell me that one of the pods I had worked on hadn't had the low voltage power supply connector screwed down. Big fuckin' deal, I thought. But still, it was a screw up. I told him that as long as I get judged on the same metric as Herb was, I didn't have a problem with whatever disciplinary action they had for me. That was the last I heard of it.
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