Do As I Say…
Riverside, Calif.
Wing and a Prayer
While I was in the Air Force, the same malfunction always occurred on a huge aircraft hangar door. The door was made up of three parts: two bi-parting doors and a third that lifted up for the planes' tails. I went in to repair this tail door many times with a master electrician who was training me, and we found that if you cranked it up, it would rest correctly on the limit switch when it came back down. I had to go fix it myself one day, so I began to crank it up but forgot one critical part: the bi-parting doors had to be open before the tail door was raised because it served in part as the upper track for the bi-parting doors. These 60-foot tall doors began to flail in the wind, and it was bar none the scariest experience of my life. The hangar was full of F-15 fighter jets, and I was about to take them out with this new giant fly swatter I'd created. Everyone in the hangar joined in and used every piece of equipment they had — de-icing ladders, etc. — to hold these massive doors while I drove across the base to get a 60-foot bucket truck. A couple of years later, someone told me the story of the stupid airman who almost took out an entire hangar's worth of planes, and I just laughed along.Craig Young
Zanesville, Ohio
Illustrations by Clint Metcalf
