Some people, including a lot of Americans, see things happen and they assume the worst about everyone involved. They assume there’s a cover up. They assume the politicians are lying. Of course the U.S. Military is lying because we’ve never told the truth about anything ever. I know, I was one of those folks. I believed all that stuff even as I was joining the Air Force 21 years ago.
And then life happened. I grew up. I got some experience under my belt and realized that most conspiracy theories are crap. The reason that most conspiracy theories are crap is simple; Most folks when given the opportunity will do the right thing versus the wrong thing simply because it’s the right thing to do. I know…I had a hard time believing it myself at first, and as life went on it just became more and more apparent to me that the people I’ve met in the military aren’t walking around wondering exactly how they were going to do the absolute WORST they could. They strive to do the BEST they can. Almost every one of them. There’s another reason why the most elaborate military conspiracies don’t hold up under scrutiny…we’re just not that good at keeping bizarre crap quiet…but that’s another post for another day.
Scumbags don’t last long in the military. We usually weed them out in basic or advanced training. If not, we’ll get them during an exercise when the pressure is cranked up to above and beyond normal. Sometimes though…they slip through. Rarely do they make it to the higher ranks, and even when they do…we get them…because they’re the rarity, they’re the exception, and no one has unlimited, unchecked power because though the respect of their rank may get them some coverage…without personal respect, they just don’t last. The higher you climb the more eyes you have on you, both from above and below and if you don’t have that personal respect, you ain’t gonna make it long.
Basically the military’s dirtiest, blackest, most discusting secret is that we do the best we can on a daily basis to protect our country. That’s our job. Sometimes that means we try to take care of our own dirty laundry before the enemies of our country can find out we messed up and use it against the country as a whole. We aren’t always successful. Sometimes the whole world finds out that we screwed up and our enemies get to celebrate. That means we didn’t do our job as well as we should have that day.
Yes, I believe that if the press gets ahold of something, they have the right to publish it. Absolutely. The public has the right to know. You’ll forgive us however, if we aren’t eager to help make ourselves and our country look bad in front of the world as a whole. We’re weird that way.
Yep, I’ll vouch for that. I spent 22 years trying to do my job the best way I knew how. That was to keep airplanes flying. If my stuff worked, the mission was accomplished. But you let an APN-59 not work, and the plane would abort a mission. That was an action so bad that we would rush out to the ramp or the taxiway, or wherever it was, to try to save the mission. I fell off the saddle of an F106, trying to fix an abort. One truck took me to the hospital while another guy climbed up to finish the job. Just doing what we were supposed to. Then another time, I crawled into the nose wheel well of a KC-135, and rode down the taxiway, changing out an RT-289, to save the mission. I got out at the end of the runway, job completed in record time, and the plane took off on time, which is one of the measurements of success.
We worked darn hard, goofed off sometimes, but mostly busted our butts to do what we were paid to do, keeping the USAF running on schedule….
Comment by Joe Comer — 20050430 @ 1131
Cover-ups are so much a part of my experience that I know for a fact that they happen and why — it’s usually the farthest thing from anything remotely sinister. It’s usually just, “Man, I/We/You fucked up. Let’s try to fix this/dust it under the rug before we get in trouble.”
In fact, I can determine, with a relative degree of success, whether a given organization is managed well or poorly based on the above paragraph’s example. If someone’s first instinct is to cover-up a fuck-up to stay out of trouble, then he works for a poorly managed organization. If I were to extrapolate my vast breadth of experience to the Air Force as a whole, that means that poorly managed organizations comprise roughly more than half of the Air Force (I’ll call it less than half in case maintenance is an ass-backwards anamoly. Airlift Maintenance is 3/4 poorly managed–90% in CONUS).
Anyway, here’s a true story. I won’t give the names of the bases but I personally knew of the situation at the time.
Two Bases (X and Y) had the same airframe assigned to them. Over a period of time, HQAMC noticed that Base X was doing 5 times as many engine changes as Base Y, so HQAMC decided to investigate and diagnose the problem with Base X.
It turns out that the engine change rate at Base X had suddenly increased over the past 8 months, while Base Y actually experienced a decrease. Prior to this period, both Base X and Base Y had roughly the same engine change rate. This was one data point that HQAMC used.
Next, the AMC IG inspected the forms for all the aircraft, as well as the engine forms, to find a trend or common cause for the engine changes. After much investigation, they found that the one problem common to both bases were engine changes due to JOAP sample bottles being jammed in oil lines and screwing-up the engine. See, what was happening was people were taking JOAP samples and the little glass bottles were slipping out of their hands and into the oil tanks. Since the bottles were slightly smaller than the oil line leading out of the tank and into the oil, the bottles managed to find their way down the line and end up at various points in the engine oil system. When this happened, it necessitated an engine change because there was no way to access the bottles and retrieve them without changing the engine. This was data point two.
So, the AMC IG had to determine why this problem, which had been common at both bases, suddenly resulted in more engine changes for Base X and a decrease at Base Y. Since the divergence appeared to have started 8 months previously, they decided to go back in time and see what, if any, major difference had occurred at the two bases.
Coincidentally enough, both units had changes of command within 2 weeks of each other during the time period in question. In fact, that was the only real change before the divergence ocurred, so the IG team interviewed random people from all ranks and specialties in the maintenance complex, including the Commanders themselves, from both bases to find the cause(s) for the divergence.
After much investigation, the AMC IG released their findings. It turned out that millions of taxpayer dollars were being wasted on engine changes at Base X because of a simple difference in command style with Base Y. You see, both the Squadron Commanders at Bases X and Y were displeased with engine changes due to JOAP bottles. It was a waste of time, man hours, and money for something that was completely preventable. But, they had completely different ways to solve the problem:
Commander Base X went the traditional maintenance officer route and said, “From now on, if you drop a JOAP bottle into an oil tank, it’s an automatic Article 15 and I’m taking stripes.”
Commander Base Y said, “If you drop a JOAP bottle in the tank, tell someone, but you’re going to stay until you swap out the oil tank or get the bottle out.”
Naturally, people at Base X weren’t going to say a damned thing if they dropped a JOAP bottle in an oil tank. In fact, people at that base had owned up to it before and the problem was solved without changing an engine, but now engine changes went through the roof, because no one was going to admit dropping a JOAP bottle in the tank and lose a stripe over it.
At Base Y, people knew they weren’t going to get into serious trouble over the mistake (not even paperwork, as before), so they tended to own up to it at an increasingly greater rate, reducing engine changes for that problem by almost 75%.
Base X was poorly managed, so cover-ups were par for the course. Base Y was well managed, so the need for covering things up evaporated. Both styles translated into either a cost savings in the millions of dollars, or a cost burden in the millions of dollars for taxpayers.
Comment by Stryker — 20050430 @ 1434
Simple - Commander at Base X was a manager and Commander at base Y was a leader. The manager decided that it was simpler to threaten everyone because it was causing his numbers to look bad so if he was going to look bad then so were the people under him. The leader at Base Y realized that this thing was a problem and apparently going to be a problem until a fix was put in. By just threatening to make everyone stay over (which everybody hates) he forced people to be a lot more cautious when doing their jobs. Realizing that most people are conscientious workers trying to do their best then they would more likly come forward if they made a mistake.
Commander X should be sent to a non-command appointment doing charts and graphs. Commander Y needs a promotion.
We still have the same problem today at Robins AFB - Managers are trained to manage and not lead therefore they do a terrible job in management positions. And we are Stuck with them.
Comment by Chief — 20050430 @ 1555
What the hell is going on at Robins these days? I think I’ve received an email or two per month about something that happened at Robins for the last year or so. The double murder capped it all.
Comment by Stryker — 20050430 @ 1730
At Robins They changed out the Managers and put Engineers in their place. Driving everyone crazy - suicides up and murders up. But don’t worry they are going to make everyone go to a touchy feely course so that we will live in total harmony with each other. I hope that there is drugs involved - it will make it much easier to live with the Goofy Clueless Engineers. (Reference Kevins Earlier Post on Engineers).
Comment by Chief — 20050430 @ 1927
Obviously not aware of the massive UFO cover up conspiracy - they are everywhere Timmer !!!
Comment by Chief — 20050430 @ 1929
The Robins double murder was a flight line chief and a paper pusher. Anybody here worried?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
Seriously, I missed that one.
Comment by Joe Comer — 20050501 @ 0007
Timmer, now I’m gonna call you on your earlier posts trashing Evangelical Christians. Ripped us to bits, with a little help there, but tore us up, and all I told you at the time was that we were simply interested in living right, doing our best, and here you are now saying that we all try to do right. Touche, my friend, nipped your ownself on this one!!
Comment by Joe Comer — 20050501 @ 0011
I’m confused; is somebody taking the piss?
Comment by Robin — 20050501 @ 0445
No, Robin… go have a drink.
Comment by Sgt. Mom — 20050501 @ 0717
Joe,
I was talking about military people specifically…or are you admitting that you all are simply trying to take over?
Comment by Timmer — 20050501 @ 0910
“The Robins double murder was a flight line chief and a paper pusher. Anybody here worried?”
Actually, it was a pointyhead SrA who shot and killed another flightline guy and his wife. He also stabbed another Airman who got away.
Comment by Stryker — 20050501 @ 1005
Mom
Yesterday was the 11th Reading Beer and Cider Festival. If I have anything to drink today my liver may go on strike. Actually I bet you lot all hate English beer eh? Philistines.
Comment by Robin — 20050501 @ 1155
When I still drank I actually preferred Guinness or Harp to anything American. Never tried any Brit beers…something about the bits of pond life floating through it…
Comment by Timmer — 20050501 @ 1223
Tsk, tsk, tsk, Robin, you are making assumptions again. British beer was the fluid, which if memory serves, my brother, two other American lads and a couple of Canadians celebrated the glorious Bicentennial 4th of July in a pub in Street by setting a challenge to drink 10 pints of the stuff. (The details are in my MT archive… even the bit about how all the other people in the hostel got food poisoning that night…)Probably Joe and Proud Veteran have also aquired a taste for it through being stationed there, but I rather think Capt. Loggie would prefer German beer.
Comment by Sgt. Mom — 20050501 @ 1300
My browser timed out so not sure if this got through or put in the holding tin or not.
Timmer the bits are all part of the flavour. Take away the bits and what have you got? Bud? Miller? No thanks. You should have tried some of the stuff they had at this festival yesterday. One of the most celebrated was “Skull Splitter”: %12 ABV!
It’s funny to see places like Street mentioned in this context. 10 pints of real ale is above and beyond the call of duty. I’ll have a look.
Sorry I’ve dragged this right off topic. Erm. Yeah, I understand what you mean but I disbelieve politicians on principle becasue I’ve never had any reason to do otherwise. It’s not limited to the Bush administration or any U.S. government; our own Mr. Blair has a proud history of half-truths and evasions. Turns out although he swore blind that no decision had been made about the war until virtually the day before, he’d committed to military action eight months previous. Weasel.
I’m sure all you chaps, to use your words, do the best you can on a daily basis to protect your country, I just don’t believe that the recent unpleasantness had anything to do with protecting your country or mine and that all those poor guys who came home in boxes that weren’t to be photographed were sent out under false pretences. And that stinks, whatever the long-term benefits for the region or its people that you’d care to specify
Comment by Robin — 20050501 @ 1427
Oh, Mom, why did you guys leave it at Robin? That’s OK, though, we’ve become friends of a sort recently. Yes, I still imbibed occasionally when I was over there. Tried out a pint or two over at - I think it was the “Rose & Crown” just off base. After a couple of back flips, I settled down and made it back to the barracks. Not too bad as ale goes, but pretty strong.It was right around Steven Hawke Day, maybe they were gonna burn me in effigy or something. But the UK was fun, really.
Stryker, honestly I knew nothing at all about the Robins murders, I stop by there once a month when I go to Macon for a doctor’s appt for a haircut and a visit to the BX and maybe the commissary, but that’s about it. Maybe I should keep up with the local news? Oh, I thought those samples were SOAP samples. Is that something else that has changed?
Or is my memory faulty there, too?
Pete says I’m trashing his APN-59, but that’s always been a good radar, well, since it went solid-state anyway. The old 1960’s model with all the little peanut tubes, was a bear to keep going, but transistors in the RX/IF section made it a lot more reliable.
I have to mention Reamer Collins, perhaps one of the best APN-59 techs ever to work on them, at the 165th AW, Savannah IAP, GA. That’s a GA-ANG unit, and I met Reamer there on a visit. He was a TSG in 1984. He told me he would run an RT unit for 8 - 12 hours on the bench before putting it on an airplane. Wow! I’d have been scared to death to try that! But he would get many hours’ flying time out of his units. I learned some stuff from him, but we never had the luxury of all that time. We had to turn out units and get them out of the shop. Maybe his way would have been better if I’d had two bench setups…..
T-T-T-THAT’S all, folks!
Comment by Joe Comer — 20050502 @ 0008