I worked on fire control systems on A-6 Intruders back in the late 80's and early 90's, and we had sensors and components installed all over the plane. I was a young pup on my first cruise, out on one of my first trouble tickets by myself. This particular component was installed on the vertical stabilizer; to get to it, you'd have to climb the ladder next to the bombardier-navigator and get on top of the wing, then work your way back and get up on top of the fuselage. You'd walk on the non-skid panels to the tail, then stand on the horizontal stabilizer to remove and replace the component above your head. One of the easier components to swap, honestly. Everything was out in the open with no flashlight wrangling necessary. Eight or ten captive screws, pop the component out, unscrew the cannon plug on the back, then reverse the same procedure with the new component.

Working on the deck of a carrier could be quite harrowing. During flight ops, you kept your head on a swivel - at any time there were hundreds of things that could easily kill you, and it took weeks to get to a comfort level where you even knew everything to keep an eye on. Even outside of flight ops, the entire deck was always busy and dangerous. My PO1 (E-6) had drilled into me that he would never have me do anything that was unsafe, as long as I'd followed his directions.

So, I inventoried and signed out my tool pouch and grabbed the component (it bugs me to this day that I can't remember what it was, but this all happened 30 years ago). I put on my float coat, buckled my cranial, and headed up to the roof to find my victim.

My plane was parked on the fantail (the area around the back of the flight deck), pushed all the way back against the edge of the ship. There were little curbs that flipped up at the edge of the deck, and planes would be pushed all the way back against them, to maximize the available space on the deck. So, I folded the ladder down and made my way back to the tail. I had removed the component when a horn sounded, loud enough to hear even through my hearing protection. Over the loudspeaker, I heard a my tail number, and a "request" for me to come to PriFly, where the "Air Boss" was.

The Air Boss was an O-5 or O-6, in charge of just about everything on the deck. Everything that happened on the deck was coordinated through the Air Boss - he had a little map of the deck, with plastic markers for every plane up there. He and his staff would coordinate parking spots, taxiing planes, firefighting equipment. A seagull couldn't take a crap on the flight deck without the Air Boss somehow finding out about it.

My float coat and cranial were green, and had a big "4F" on them, denoting what squadron and shop I worked for. In the minute and a half that it took me to climb down off of the plane and make my way over to the island, the Air Boss had called my shop, and I entered PriFly at the same time as my PO1 and PO2. My bosses got their asses handed to them that afternoon... but strangely enough, I didn't.

It didn't occur to my PO1 or PO2 to bother to check where the plane was parked before (a) scheduling that repair, and (b) sending a newbie out by himself to do the swap. So, there I was... standing on a horizontal stabilizer, on a plane where the tail was hanging off the edge of the deck, over a hundred feet above nothing but water, with no tether securing me to the plane. The Air Boss game me a snide complement to me about being willing to follow orders, no matter how stupid they were, and told me to come see him personally if my PO1 or PO2 ever told me to do something stupid like that again so he could have the plane moved. Under normal circumstances, the shop would put in a request to our centralized maintenance shop a day or two before, and they'd request all of the plane moves at the same time, so they'd be positioned together when our shift began. PO1 and PO2 hadn't bothered to check where the plane was, and didn't put in a request to have it moved.

Ironically enough, I never had to go see the Air Boss again.