ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam --
Throughout Operation Christmas Drop’s 65 years, C-130s have
been taking off, aircrews have been delivering bundles of donated goods to the
remote islands around the Pacific and at the end of every mission the OCD team
has celebrated hard-earned success. The amount of work it takes to make it all
happen is hard to imagine; sometimes it seems only a miracle can pull
everything together. One of Santa’s secrets to success, the 374th Maintenance
Group, gets the job done through a bond within their team and a special love
for the big, old birds they push into the sky every day.
What I saw on the Andersen Air Force Base flightline during
OCD was a group of dedicated Airmen supporting each other and putting their
hands and hearts into their work. C-130s may be a handful, but everyone was
ready and eager to step up and help out in any way, even if that meant doing a
task to which they weren’t accustomed.
“Here at OCD, we’re a very tight-knit group,” said 374 MXS
crew chief Senior Airman Benjamin Campanella, or “Camp” as his team calls him.
“We get a sense of family because we do everything together. It’s good to get
that bond.”
During the time I spent with the 374th Maintenance Group
team, I saw them inspect, prepare and marshal one aircraft after another. Every
time an aircraft was ready to taxi for takeoff, a maintainer would give it a
last pat or even a kiss on the nose before marshaling.
“We really do put blood, sweat and tears into these birds,”
Campanella said. “Every one of us has been banged up while working on them
before.”
Campanella talked about the bond maintainers tend to form
with aircraft and the different personalities the planes have. Some
"pout," or start having problems in different situations. According
to Campanella one of the OCD planes prefers to be on mission and will start
getting grumpy when it has to go home.
"We do get attached to them," Campanella said.
"We're sad to see a plane leave. Unless it was a bad plane. Planes are
like people: sometimes they just need a pat on the back, sometimes a kick in
the pants."
Superstition is a curious aspect of maintainer culture.
"Ask any maintainer," Campanella said. "If
you become a maintainer, you start to get superstitious."
When one of the OCD aircraft began to malfunction,
Campanella took off the Christmas elf hat he had been wearing.
"Every time I marshal with this hat on she starts
pouting," Campanella said. "She just doesn't like the hat."
Campanella talked about how B-1 crew chiefs won't pull out
the marshaling kit until right before it's time to taxi because if the plane sees
it, it will break.
According to Campanella, some crew chiefs develop a sixth
sense with an aircraft. They know when a plane is going to return broken or when
it's going to start pouting.
When planes do pout and break, however, their maintainers are
ready and willing to fix them.
One morning, I watched as the maintenance team generated the
last aircraft and began to break for lunch. However, prior to takeoff, the last
plane’s engine malfunctioned. Despite their hunger, not one maintainer
complained or hesitated. With a shout of “Alright, let’s go!” they sped back to
the heat of the flightline and hastily began working together to prepare a new
plane.
The 374 MXG team had the backup C-130H up and gone within
two hours, allowing the aircrew to accomplish critical training objectives
while delivering Christmas gifts to anxious islanders.
What’s the secret to their success?
“We’re a very hard working team,” Campanella said. “If
someone’s out here working, everyone else pitches in. There’s only so many
people who can be on a job at one time, but everyone always wants to help each
other out. When you get a good group of people together that know their jobs
and that love working together, they can really do amazing things. That’s my
favorite part of the job: when something’s broken and we have to get something
moving quick, that’s the best.”
From crawling under the aircraft to working in tight spaces,
some of Campanella’s favorite parts of the job don’t look easy.
“As far as jobs that contort your body, it’s probably
gymnasts first, ballerinas and then maintainers,” Campanella said with a laugh.
“Maintenance puts your body in insanely unnatural positions, but when you gotta
get a jet off the ground you gotta do what you gotta do.”
Maybe one of the reasons that the team works well together
is because they share a common affection.
“This is what we train for,” Campanella said. “Being here is
what all the preparation, training and long hours are for. Doing things like
this is why we all joined.”
Spending time with the OCD 2016 team was genuinely a
pleasure. It’s easy to feel good about being part of a Christmas delivery
mission but enjoying the work that goes into it can be a different matter. I
saw the frustration, sweat and pain that goes into keeping planes in the sky.
When a group of people goes through that kind of struggle and at the end of the
day they can still say that they love their team and their job, there must be
something truly special involved.