Support
07:48
Similar to yesterday, I found another few lines in a book I was processing for sale that caught my eye, this one in Heroes & Aeroplanes of the Great War 1914-1918 by Joseph A. Phelan (1966):
The Americans were like any other men, save that as a nation they had to learn everything from scratch. But the same rules applied to them as to their European contemporaries. In the air, the only men of any nation who stood a chance of surfiving were those who were cool and bvusinesslike, or better, cold and determined, who had keen eyesight and fast reflexes. And who had 100 good men behind them on the ground, because that is how many men it takes to put one man in the air.
It's that last part that gets my attention: "And who had 100 good men behind them on the ground, because that is how many men it takes to put one man in the air." While I was working on health and maintenance systems for an aircraft, a senior manager for some of the flight management computing software once told our group that we weren't important because we "didn't make the plane fly". I've always remembered that as the most offensively stupid thing I've ever heard at work. Unreliable planes with poor support don't fly either because they spend their time in hangars, not in the air.
Anyway, making things fly is exciting, but I'll never pause for a second to reconsider before putting on my jacket that says "Maintenance". Big bold letters. Support makes the plane fly.