Flying on my favorite flight, from Burbank to Phoenix, the guy next to me talked for a solid 45 minutes about his job working for some weapons manufacturer. I understood very little, so I was never exactly certain if and when I should be horrified. It went something like:
You got the SH46. I flew those with the T56 or T53–I don’t remember which. I used to work on those TS85s with about 1400 horsepower. They produce a lot of horsepower. And then there’s the T701 which is made by GE where all you have is a gear box, compressor, and hot section, it’s all the size of, say, your seat. And we build them so you can upgrade them. The Israelis put stinger missiles on the wing and, you see that spot down there? That little silver thing we’re flying over? They could, if that was a stinger missile and they fired it at us right now, we’d be dead in–I don’t know, 5 seconds.
That last part was a little disturbing and I kept my eye on the little silver thing he had been pointing to from 35,000 feet up as we flew past it as close as I could. If there were Israeli’s armed with stinger missiles down there, they held their fire.
As we were landing, this guy drained his 3rd Bloody Mary (mind you, it’s a one hour flight), and pointed to a ridge of rocks (at least as near as I can tell that’s what he was pointing to) as we were coming in over Phoenix, and said to me: Would you look at that? God bless America.
I kind-of knew what he was talking about, because just as he said that I realized that NADA was the answer to 49 down (zilch), thus completing the Southwest Airlines Magazine crossword puzzle.