Polishing the Leading Edge
On a clear night long ago, I was a Crew Chief tasked with a mundane yet important task: polishing the leading edge of a Gulfstream IV aircraft at Andrews Air Force Base, MD.
It was one of many such tasks we regularly performed, setting us apart from our comrades elsewhere in the world. You see, beautification wasn’t all that much of a priority in much of the rest of the Air Force. As long as the plane didn’t have any holes where it shouldn’t and most of the pieces were in place, then everyone considered it a fully mission-capable aircraft.
But at Andrews, appearances mattered more than mere airworthiness. This is the place hosting planes that fly US leadership all over the world, and for all the dirtiness of our government, it wouldn’t do to have them seen exiting an aircraft that looked like it just came out the other end of a monster truck rally. The planes were spotless and the accommodations were luxurious.
It was an interesting gig, to say the least.
What follows is a tale most peculiar: a ritual we performed on those occasions when the plane got a thorough bath. It was a rite of passage for some; a test of endurance and skill for others.
The ritual commenced with twisting and contorting in a vain effort to pull a pair of ill-fitting white cotton coveralls over my uniform. A passerby would be forgiven for wondering whether I was performing a new modern dance routine or trying to remove a knife from the middle of my back. After a few awkward hip thrusts, a dislocated shoulder, and some cracked ribs, I’d finally get the bunny suit on and velcro the damn thing closed.
Next came the gloves. Some folks will wear the yellow playtex gloves, but I’m a Nitrile Man. These flimsy blue gloves will rip, tear, and disintegrate at a moment’s notice, providing perfect masculine protection for my hands. The fact that I’m wearing gloves at all would elicit a smug grunt from the few maniacs who believe wearing gloves of any kind is an affront to god’s will and a threat to their dominion over the earth, and thus my compromise had inherently corrupted my character as a man and child of god.
Dirty hands, clean heart I guess.
After donning the bunny suit, I’d pull the painter’s mask over my mouth and affix the science class goggles over my eyes. In a future time and place, I’d be ready to cook some meth or be set upon by jackals for the wild perversion of all that is right and good for wearing a mask, but luckily this is Andrews Air Force Base in the Year 2000 and I’m encased within the accepted attire to buff and polish the chrome-plated leading edge of a Gulfstream IV aircraft wing.
I can hear the sound of my breath booming inside the mask and with my movements constrained by the bulky white bunny suit, I slowly kneel to pick the air hose off the floor and connect it the pneumatic buffer, like some ersatz astronaut on the lunar surface.
Oh, and this buffer deserves a moment to itself. This chrome-plated contraption looks like it was cast from the bowels of an old foundry in western Pennsylvania during the golden age of American forging might. It weighs at least 20 pounds and looks like someone stared intently at an old Hoover vacuum head and said, “What if we put some giant counter-rotating heads on this thing?”
At any rate, I’m not picking this thing up off the floor until I tie a white cotton rag over the aforementioned twin counter-rotating heads. The rag itself comes from one of those burlap cubes that were commonplace during this era. The rags seemed to have been hospital bed sheets, until they were torn asunder and given new life as squares of cloth stuffed into burlap cubes secured with safety wire. These rags were fantastic — they were plentiful, cleaned just about everything from common dirt to hydraulic fluid, and were just plain convenient to have on hand.
Naturally, the Air Force eliminated them.
At any rate, you may be asking why I’m placing a rag over the buffing heads. Aren’t those giant discs there to specifically engage in the act of buffing and polishing? You’d think so, but left naked and bare like common streetwalkers, the exposed buffing pads would cause swirls to appear on the chrome–an egregious offense only slightly less worse than getting hopped-up on mescaline and committing some light manslaughter. That little oopsie can be covered up, but not the swirls on the chrome. That’s forever.
After securing the rag about the rotating heads, I suggestively insert two fingers into a can of Flitz, scoop out some of the paste, and place a couple of dollops over the center of each buffing pad. Now, it should be said that there is some debate in buffing polymer selection. Some people swear by Eagle One, their belief being that it’s a liquid and liquid is always better than paste, but these are silly people whose chrome is dull and unimpressive. In a more civilized age, they would’ve been flayed alive; their skins hung on the city walls as their heretical beliefs were stamped out with brutal finality, but in these degenerate times we merely agree to disagree.
The grand preparations complete, I let out a long sigh and decide it’s a good time for a smoke break. Am I trying to delay the inevitable? Have my procrastinating ways inevitably emerged to sabotage my careful time management? Sure. But I also just wanted to have a cigarette. I was addicted to those things at the time and picked them up the usual way: I needed to occasionally take a break and the only acceptable way to do it without someone coming by and jumping down my throat for being lazy was lighting up a cigarette and taking some time for myself. It was a little treat.
About 15 to 45 minutes later (who can say during a smoke break, cigarette time works differently), I put the mask and goggles back on, lift that art deco behemoth of American metalwork off the floor and rest it on the leading edge chrome. This is it. The moment of truth.
I squeeze the handle.
It immediately bucks, 20 pounds of cast stainless steel fighting my efforts to keep it in place as the surface instantly turns black as night. Just about every muscle group is engaged in keeping this thing from flying off the surface and ensuring good coverage on the chrome. After clearing about a foot of chrome, I stop and look down the leading edge. My goal is the wingtip all the way at the end of the wing. It might as well be a mile away.
It’s going to be a long night.
Eventually I settle into a steady rhythm. There’s modern rock playing over the hangar’s speakers. I can’t hear really it over the whine of the pneumatic buffer, but from what I can tell it’s Nickleback or Three Doors Down or whatever, so I’m not really missing out.
From this point forward, I will not look ahead to see how far I have to go, nor look back to see how far I’ve come. To do so would be to invite despair or fatigue. The only thing that exists is the section of chrome right in front of me that I polish until the inky black paste disappears and the dull chrome begins to reveal itself again. I’ll only stop to periodically change the rag on the buffer and apply more Flitz to it. Always more Flitz. You really can’t have too much Flitz. Seriously, put some more Flitz on there.
I enter an altered state of mind as the buffer’s noise completely overwhelms my hearing, the fogged-up goggles obscure my vision, and my breathing forms a steady, audible tempo determining my pace. While in this fugue state my mind will inevitably drift and I’ll remember that if I were back in the Real Air Force, I wouldn’t be doing this powder-puff nonsense. I’d be out there freezing my nuts off turning wrenches, launching planes, and puzzling over the electrical mysteries of a system designed by a contractor who made a healthy donation to their local Congressman.
You know, real Crew Chief shit.
Instead I’m stuck in this warm, well-lit hangar for the entire night performing a mindless and ultimately meaningless task. After the first flight, this entire leading edge will be covered with the remains of various insect species who came into sudden and violent contact with its surface during the aircraft’s descent to the runway. Sure, I’ll clean off the insectoid goo with Windex and quickly polish it with some Brasso, but it’ll never look as good as it does right after I finish this laborious process.
The gleaming finish that I’m hoping to attain will be appreciated by only a handful of people for a few hours. My main hope, my most fervent wish, is that the morning sun will bounce off the highly reflective surface at the perfect angle just as someone important crosses the beam’s path, blinding them with the white, searing glare of our life-giving star and providing an unmistakable testament of my pursuit of polishing perfection. They may not appreciate my work, but they damn sure will be affected by it.
This is my art for which I have suffered.
The natural question at this point is why am I even doing this? Because here, in this time and place, my mission is to provide an aesthetically and mechanically flawless aircraft to our leaders and their friends who want to fly on an executive aircraft with “United States of America” emblazoned across the fuselage. Perfection is the standard. Attention to detail is the norm.
It’s why I’ll spend countless hours crawling along the floor of the aircraft, picking fuzz out of the cheap carpet. It’s why I’ll probe the mysteries of various leathers, teasing out the secrets of several fabrics to better learn how to clean and repair scratches and tears. It’s why I will conduct rigorous, and possibly unnatural, experiments to see which wood cleaner provides the highest streak-free shine.
No one will appreciate the effort, especially not the friends of the First Daughter, who will decide to completely trash the interior of an aircraft flying back from the Sydney Olympics, causing thousands of dollars of damage that we’ll repair, replace, or restore in a matter of hours before the plane departs for its next mission.
At 0344, I finally reach the end of the wing. My mouth tastes like metal and Flitz. My goggles are covered with black dust and gunk. I disconnect the air hose from the buffer and mindlessly toss it to the floor. It’s finally time to get out of this gear and wash-up before commencing Phase II: The Empolishing.
After removing the blackened painter’s mask and goggles, I’ll take the rag off my head and fight the overwhelming urge to wipe my face and make an already bad situation worse. Right now, quantum physics and surface tension conspire to ensure that the sweat on my skin is held in a state of quantum uncertainty.
Should this state be disrupted, the waveform will collapse and the inky black residue on my face will form gushing torrents of ichor that will envelop my entire uniform and exposed skin. With paranoia from the X-Files still fresh in people’s minds, I’ll either be shot or taken to a secret facility to be dissected and studied, while my family will be informed that I was killed during a training accident.
They will be thanked on behalf of a grateful nation.
On my way to the latrine, I run into a Stew(ard) in the hallway. He’s loading
case after case of of hard liqour onto a rolling conveyor going out the door to a truck waiting just outside.
“You guys got a long mission or something?”I ask.
The Stew looks me up and down, noting my apparent attempt at larping as a dark elf before shaking it off. “Nah, it’s only for three days.”
The conclusion is obvious: this VIP is a straight-up baller. Seemingly reading my thoughts, the Stew says, “It’s not for him, it’s for us.”
Oh, it’s that guy.
Most VIPs, like Hillary or Tipper, tend to have the same crews flying them around; however, this VIP is the equivalent of pulling latrine duty.
He’s the 89th Airlift Wing’s dirty job. Nobody wants it, but everyone has to do it. I’m not sure what maneuvering and gamesmanship happens in the background to keep from getting assigned to this VIP, but the machinations on Survivor would likely pale in comparison. This VIP is not just detested, he’s universally reviled.
I nod and say some pleasantries to extract myself from the conversation so I can get to the latrine. The urge to claw at my face to get the gunk off is almost overwhelming at this point.
Busting open the door and entering the latrine with grim purpose, I scoop a massive bolus of pumice soap from a gigantic orange bucket. I close my eyes and furiously scrub my face. I can feel the pumice tearing off layer after layer of skin.
My pores scream for relief, but like a medieval monk, I know that only through pain can one be truly cleansed.
I keep scrubbing until I’m sure that nothing of my former epidermis remains. I splash water over my face until it feels safe to open my eyes. I look down and see the last remnants of black goo slowly oozing down the drain. The interior of the sink is now a uniform gray and as I look into the mirror, so is my skin. I look like death warmed over.
Staring into the mirror on this lonely night, I recall that I’ve been repeatedly told that I’m one of the best of the best, and that my rock-solid reliability and commitment to excellence have earned me a coveted spot here among the elite.
The lives of our nation’s leaders and their families depend upon my integrity, mechanical acumen, and unerring pursuit of perfection. It’s why I’ve become obsessive to the point of paranoia: double-checking, even triple-checking, my work to ensure that nothing has been overlooked.
But for all the talk of perfection and excellence, there’s a strong streak of recklessness that runs through the entire Special Air Missions branch of the 89th Airlift Wing. It’s almost as if we believe ourselves to be so good at what we do, so confident in our skill, that we feel almost untouchable by the laws of chance and consequence.
And for the most part, we are.
It’s an attitude that leads to risking the life of the First Lady by flying through a severe thunderstorm cell, even though you’ve been advised to divert to another airfield, and then experiencing a microburst that nearly crashes the aircraft and kills all aboard.
But it doesn’t.
It’s a mindset that decides to keep towing a plane during that same storm, even though lightning is within five. Not five miles. Five yards.
With an angry blue afterimage of a lighting bolt still hovering in our vision, we decide to just gun it for the hangar. As our wing walkers fall behind even though they’re running at top speed, we abandon all pretense of following the checklist or adhering to basic tenets of safety. This tow will stop for no one, especially not for the angry thunder god hurling lightning bolts in our immediate vicinity and threatening death or worse, damage to equipment.
The tow completes without incident.
These and similar scenarios would play out again and again, but everything always worked out alright in the end. No one was ever seriously injured or killed during my tenure. No VIPs were ever harmed and no aircraft was ever lost.
I’ve never been sure if our good fortune was due to being some of the luckiest bastards on the planet or in spite of it. But it always held out and the people entrusted to our care were always delivered safely to their destinations.
It’s 0413 and I’m spreading commercial grade flour over the leading edge chrome and gently rubbing it in lazy circles. In addition to polishing the chrome, the flour will get into the the tiny pits and scratches riddling the leading edge, removing all of the remaining bits of blackened Flitz ensconced within them.
This is actually the fun part of the night. The dirty work’s done and as I progress, I’m finally seeing my efforts pay off as the dark spots and dull film disappear to reveal shiny chrome. In a few moments, I’ll tear open a burlap bale of cotton and start rubbing fistfuls of it over the leading edge.
This isn’t washed and refined cotton. It’s cotton in the raw: rough, sticky, and yellow. It’ll remove the remaining flour and polish the chrome to a high-quality shine. If I’ve done everything right, by the time I toss the last bit of cotton to the floor, the chrome will look like liquid metal. You’d only have to touch it with your finger to send ripples spreading throughout the rest of the leading edge.
A little over a year from now, after a botched election and a major terrorist attack, civilian contractors will witness this ritual and scoff that none of this is in their contract.
They might as well be speaking Esperanto. The words sound familiar, but they have no meaning to me. Oh sure, everyone in the Air Force talks tough about how we’re “not going to do that shit” but two hours later, we’re always out there doing that shit. These contractors, however, are serious.
What are these people even doing here, anyway? This is a specially manned unit. You actually need to prove yourself to be here. Not just anyone can waltz in and start turning wrenches. Can they?
And yet here our eventual replacements stand, civilians right off the streets. A few are former military, but most were not in the Air Force so poor decision making is already evident. Some of them haven’t even worked on fixed-wing aircraft.
But no matter their provenance, they’re providing a running commentary of what is and what is not in their contract. They look and speak like…civilians. It’s enough to make my skin crawl.
How did it come to this? For all the talk of values–honor, duty, and sacrifice–it turns out that values have no value, because no value can be placed on them. The decision to replace you with civilian contractors was simple: the number in one cell on an Excel sheet was a little bit less than the amount in another cell.
How do you quantify pride? What’s the ROI of duty? If they can’t be measured they don’t exist, and a spreadsheet encompasses all that actually matters in this world. It is the foundational description and tabulation of our reality, beyond whose bounds nothing exists.
In this case, the spreadsheet said it would be cheaper to inactivate the 89th Aircraft Generation Squadron and replace it with civilian contractors. That’s how they came to be standing on our hangar floor mocking our work. Well, that and hefty cash contributions to key Congressmen by the defense contractor who won the maintenance contract.
After all, isn’t it fitting for the aircraft maintainers to be the servants of those whom the Congressmen serve?
But all of that is still in the future. It’s 0706 and the day shift is filtering in.
They’re hauling heavy white buckets and carrying sponge mops to wax the aircraft to a high-gloss shine. My illusions are still secure and intact.
I even allow myself a little bit of pride as others admire the work. I’m in such a good mood I even overlook the inevitable asshole who always says it’s not as good as his.
But it doesn’t matter. The sun’s up, my shift’s done, and that leading edge looks better than the day it rolled off the assembly line.
Tomorrow night, I might swap out a potable water tank, change an aircraft tire, or troubleshoot the ever-popular “cabin smells like rotten eggs” issue, which typically comes down to someone farting during a flight and failing to own up to it.
Their panicked silence will result in a $2000 air/water separator change, because in Washington, DC, a costly fiction is always preferable to an embarrassing truth.
Fascinating story! Thanks for sharing.