Well, it's firearm-related - and funny........

by Catoosa, Sunday, September 15, 2019, 23:27 (1896 days ago)

Posted by a fellow on the Warbird Information Exchange......

Many, many years ago my father was part of a Sabre groundcrew (he was the engine tech or "fitter") in Chatham, New Brunswick. Chatham then (if I recall correctly) was a Sabre OTU, and on one course one student pilot hung around with the groundcrew quite a bit trying to learn all he could about the airplane, and the groundcrew took a liking to him.

Though a competent pilot, it turned out that this particular guy couldn't shoot worth (you know) and eventually was in danger of washing out if he didn't pull off a good score on the target drogue on his last shoot, and he was pretty distraught about the end of his Sabre dream. Enter a particular ground crew:

While the armorers were reloading the two guns on the returning Sabre our sprog was to fly (gunnery training often used just two loaded guns) and the previous pilot was getting out, somehow the aircraft went u/s and became unavailable. Mounting instead the spare Sabre parked off to the side for just such a contingency, the crew chief and the armorer, while helping the pilot strap in and hook up told him "Sir - no matter what - fire all your ammunition - all of it. Don't come back with anything left" and then they jumped off.

The pilot went out and made a pretty creditable gunnery showing and eventually joined an active duty fighter squadron and happily flew the Sword for many hours - because my father's ground crew had loaded all six guns on the spare (four with no tracer) and then disabled the scheduled aircraft on it's turnaround. Moral of the story: always take good care of your ground crew!