Flight_Idle (Steph), I never did it honest
My one and only visit to OC Eng, with my hat on.
A couple of years after leaving my job as a Ground Eng on Albert and I'm SNCO i/c a second line servicing team. There was never any way that my lads on the team were doing overtime unless I was there, so, having helped with the pre air test engine ground runs, after in my case a 14 hour day, I supervised the aircrafts move back into the hangar, before cease work. At the time we had the practice of leaving the main aircraft jacks in position in the hangar (big, heavy and awkward as long as you left them where they were they were no problem) and reversing the aircraft into position over them. As I had spent around 4 hours out with the ground running team, I was not aware that in our absence our new Flight Commander had ordered a "proper" clean up of the hangar by the rest of the team, including moving the main jacks to sweep underneath them. You all know what's coming. My wing safety man on the RH wingtip (left as we pushed the aircraft backwards into the hangar, and from my viewpoint) was a tired young chap who had spent most of the evening out in the cold as safety man for the ground runs. His state of alertness was indicated by the still affirmative "clear" (thumb up) signal as I convinced the tug driver to ram the out of position main Jack with the RH external tank. No excuses, I was in charge, my fault.
The team to a man insisted we could recover the situation, and with luck in having a spare tank, and a steady diet of coffee breaks we managed to change the tank before the day shift came in the next morning to prep the aircraft for the flight test. It was duly flown and returned to the line, serviceable. I had no answer for OC Eng when he expressed his surprise at an "experienced" SNCO making such a basic mistake. Of course, there were many excuses available for it, but only my failure to spot the main jack had been moved was the cause. I was grateful that OC Eng did have some understanding of the hours we had all put in to meet a target that day.
Smudge