"Professional" Flight Engineers.
Having been a Flight Engineer on three models of C130 (A-E-H) Hercules as well as the L1011 Tristar from Mr Lockheed and the B707 and B747 from Mr Boeing I guess I qualify as a "Professional" Flight Engineer. If the incident Wunwing refers to was a US carrier arriving into Narita with 12000 Kgs of fuel in one tank and nearly none in any other tank I knew of it, but no detail. My understanding was that the airman occupying the FE position was in fact a pilot whom had no engineering background. Lack of system knowledge was a factor in that following a cross-feed valve failure nobody knew how to utilize the refuel-dump system to overcome the problem.
In days gone by all RAAF Flight Engineers were previously aircraft ground engineers. As such, on the pre C130J model C130's at least, the F/E would operate the flight and carry out any required rectification of defects when away from home base. I assume these days the C130J carries a "Crew Chief" or two to maintain the aircraft away base. I can't imagine the pilot crew doing so.
No fair minded person could claim to be able to better monitor systems than can computers. Neither can any fair minded person claim that a computer can come up with ways and means to operate a system with "out of the ordinary" problems, something which "Professional" F/E's sometimes had to do, and were able to do because their system knowledge allowed them to.
Me, I just am thankful for what aviation gave me and I now enjoy retirement and what that gives me.