Classmates and Others

The topic is (once again) Air Traffic Control Radar Repair school at Keesler AFB back in 1973... As it turned out I didn't really know any of my classmates - they were mostly married (so they didn't live on base) or in other squadrons... Of course, Airman Juneau (my roomie) and I had originally been scheduled to go through the program together but I ended up in the self-pace Basic Electronics class and skipped a month ahead of him. (Thank goodness - he was hard to take in large doses.) But I do have a few stories.

First, I want to mention Combat Controllers:
A lot of people don't realize that the Air Force has "elite" special forces. Yup, they do... The two major groups are Pararescuemen and Combat Controllers. Both undergo Army Airborne and Combat Diver training (focus is on undetected infiltration), and are taught how to survive anywhere on the planet... In addition, the Pararescuemen (who rescue downed pilots) are fully qualified paramedics, whereas the Combat Controllers (who coordinate airstrikes) are FAA certified Air Traffic Controllers. Both spend years in training and the washout rate is as high as any elite force in the military - basically, these guys are pretty badass :-)
So, why am I mentioning this? ... Because the Combat Controllers through Air Traffic Controller school at Cody Hall, and we used to see them outside during breaks... They were easy to spot - they wore berets, their fatigues were always starched and pressed, and their boots were polished to mirror-like perfection... But the main reason I remember them is that they would kiss each other on the lips... I mean, I kind of understand the whole "brotherhood" thing, but the kissing always struck me as a bit over the top :-) But I digress...

Yeah - it's funny the things that stick in your mind. The only thing I remember about one of my classmates is he was always walking around singing "Tube steak, tube steak, tu-tu tu-tu tu-tu-tu-tu tu-tu tube steak!" (Apparently he made that up as an homage to his "package" which he was quite fond of)... And another guy would yell "Yo Rinny!" all the time. (That line was from a 1950s TV series featuring a German Shepherd named Rin-tin-tin.) Yeah - I have no idea what that was about either, but (once again) that's the only thing I remember about the guy...

However,  I do remember quite a few things about the sergeant who sat next to me in my classes (but not his name). He was from rural Oklahoma and was half Native American (he didn't look it - I would have guessed Hispanic), and he had a wife and kids.
He'd spent 12 years as a Navy aircraft mechanic (on a carrier) and had gotten fed up with spending so much time at sea (and having recurring nightmares about propellers), so he decided to transfer to the Air Force and retrain as a radar tech.
Yeah - apparently they had prop planes (surveillance?) on the carriers, and spinning propellers were totally invisible in the dim lighting on the hangar deck. Also, the area was cramped and crowded and there was so much noise coming from everywhere you couldn't hear the props either, so you just had to be constantly aware of your surroundings... Then shortly before it was time for my deskmate to re-up his supervisor had a momentary lapse and walked right into prop (instant death) hence the nightmares...

But my favorite one of his stories was about the Navy advancement exam. Now - back in the day those exams were impossible to ace. Some of the questions were intentionally ambiguous, while others had multiple correct answers and the "right" answer wasn't the most correct one - plus, very few people finished it in the allotted time. The point is that the odds against anyone getting 100% were (intentionally) extremely high...
But there was one major flaw: The exam had a two page "fill in the circle"answer sheet, and my deskmate was looking over them (for questions he had skipped) when he suddenly realized that the pattern of dots on the second page was the inverted mirror image of the first (apparently they graded both pages by flipping over the same scoring template). So he used that info to cross-correlate his answers and aced the exam.
Of course, his perfect score raised major red flags, and when he explained what had happened he was told that he had "cheated" (the issue went all the way up to the Pentagon). But since he never had access to privileged info nor did he make use of any unauthorized materials, the charges were eventually dropped...

I don't doubt the story for a second - the guy was wicked sharp (between the two of us we always had the highest scores in the class - and no, we didn't cheat), and I suspect that I found the story so compelling because of my feelings about rules and regs. To wit:

It all starts with a simple goal. And rather than tell their rank and file workers "This is what you need to accomplish - use your best judgement and behave ethically", a bureaucracy will invariably create rules, processes and policies that serve to take away all discretion and avoid any accountability... The problem is that no matter how carefully rules are written there are always circumstances (and interpretations) that lead to different outcomes from was intended.
Furthermore, most bureaucrats don't know (or care) about their actual objective - adhering to the rules becomes their only goal. Even when circumstances have changed to the point where the rules make absolutely no sense they still doggedly follow them to the letter. (Like after WWII when Holland forced Jews to pay back taxes on property seized by the Nazis because they were still the "owners of record" while they were in concentration camps... Yup. That's bureaucracy in action...)

Now - I'm not implying rules are always bad. (I actually like them because they give me something to bend.) They're only bad when those who follow them don't understand their purpose and are never permitted to use discretion...

And the point is that although my deskmate clearly violated the "intent" of the exam (to answer the questions based solely on his knowledge of the material) he didn't violate a single rule... So, did he "cheat"? ... Well, that's an interesting question, isn't it?