Ground Support Equipment Trivia
To see a World in a Grain of Sand, wrote William Blake
, to which one might append, To see a World in Ground Support Equipment.
For aviation lovers interested in the subset of aviation that is ground support equipment, there is no shortage of fun facts and trivia. Here is just a sampling from this buffs personal collection, which is growing with each passing week.
Ground support equipment making cinematic and military history
Picture this. It is the late 1960s. You are a film exec at Paramount. You are, no pun intended, trying to get a project off the ground: a film version of Joseph Hellers satirical novel, Catch 22. But there is a problem. You need aircraft. Vintage aircraft. Seventeen functional and one non-flyable B-25 Mitchell bombers to be exact, the whir of whose engines will provide the bulk of the soundtrack. And you will need crew. In the air and on the ground. Ground support equipment crew to service the planes with such picturesque names as:
Free, Fast and Ready
Laden Maiden
Passionette Paulette
One of the most famous scenes from Catch-22 features Jon Voight (father of Angelina Jolie) in a ground support equipment jeep, calmly pursuing a conversation as the one non-flyable plane crashes and burns behind him.
According to American historian Michael C. Scoggins, the vintage fleet assembled for the filming of this movie constituted the twelfth-largest air force in the world. By assembling the fleet (and ground support equipment crew), the film company is thought to have actually saved this kind of aircraft equipment from fading into obscurity. Fifteen of the aircraft used are still in existence today, including one that is safely ensconced in the Smithsonian.
(
Ground support equipment enthusiasts take note: the Smithsonian is also home to vintage ground support equipment from the American space program.)
Ground support equipment: a military challenge
In his article The B-25 Mitchell in the USSR, translated by James F. Gebhardt, Aleksandr Akvilyanov gives a firsthand account of his experience with the bomber during World War II. Interestingly, the Soviet air and ground crews struggled with this technology, in spite of its objective technical superiority, because of a simple lack of appropriate
ground support equipment.
The instructions may have been in English, a language none of his crew had mastered, but it was the lack of such
ground support equipment as lifts and trestles that caused the most trouble.
Vintage ground support equipment tug in Texas museum
How long can a piece of ground support equipment remain in service? In the case of Tug 160, an American Airlines baggage tractor: more than half a century. The little red tractor that could was in service for 56 years before it was retired to a Fort Worth museum in 2001.
A careful study of ground support equipment reveals a surprising amount of information about the last century.
One wonders what message the ground support equipment of today will leave for the aviation historians of the future.
by: Percy Evans
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