The problem was in the last part of your statement "even when they did not know why". Its the Military way to make sure you don't know "why". It may work for grunts in the field (I doubt this too) to just follow procedures step-by-step without a clue as to what the purpose is. However, if we had a little more info about the significance of some of these maint procedures we could have done a better job. I think we all wanted to do the best job we could. But we were limited because our training was crap at Rucker and we had to learn everything on the job in the field. For example I was refering to the stress and presure to cut corners because it seemed like it wouldn't matter. With a little more understanding we would have done more than just pull the screen and take a quick look. We may have been able to actually look for something. I learned a lot from the pilots, other crew chiefs and the maint guys. After about 3 months I was pretty good at it but I didn't know shit when I first got there making for a relatively dangerous situation.

Gator Triple 7