Page 146 - Never Fly Solo

WALK THE FLIGHT LINE | 119
with their frustrations, and got a much better feel for all the
things they did to make the mission happen. Basically, I was
one of the guys for a day, and there was no rank or position
separating us. And despite all I knew about what maintenance
did to support the pilots, the experience painted a clear pic-
ture of what really went into giving me a jet that was “MR”—
mission-ready.
The crew chiefs were the ones prepping the jets to fly.
They performed the detailed inspections and exhausting labor
behind the scenes to make sure the F-16s were safe to fly.
They checked the engines and made sure the oil was clean, the
tires were inflated, and the weapons systems worked properly.
Without them, the mission wouldn’t happen.
Most were just out of high school and barely twenty years
old. Some even had dreams of becoming fighter pilots but
didn’t have the parental guidance, the grades, or the money
to go to college or the eyesight to fly. Many were actually in
college, getting their degrees, with the hope of becoming offi-
cers one day. They looked up to and respected the pilots of
the 79th. I lost that respect from Airman Tyler. One thing was
certain: he no longer looked at me as a wingman. I was not
his trusted partner. I became a wing nut.
While working with the troops, I realized that we had
more in common than I had thought. Like me, those crew
chiefs had families and friends back home, whom they missed.
They, too, had to deploy to remote, desolate locations such as
Saudi Arabia, sleep in tents, eat lousy food, and make that
same chilly predawn hundred-yard walk to the showers. They,
too, had demanding supervisors, who pushed them to per-
form and expected nothing less than excellence.
Before this humbling experience, I was pretty much blind
to the behind-the-scenes maintenance wingmen of my squad-