{"id":3446,"date":"2015-07-03T16:07:40","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T23:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=3446"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:55","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:55","slug":"133-murphys-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/133-murphys-law\/","title":{"rendered":"#133 Murphy’s Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lot of folks, in various pursuits other than aviation, have quoted a variation of Murphy\u2019s Law.\u00a0 In aviation, the law is usually stated, \u201cIf an aircraft part can be installed incorrectly, someone will do it\u201d.\u00a0 It\u2019s also stated as, \u201cWhat can go wrong, will go wrong\u201d.<\/h3>\n

I\u2019d always accepted the existence of Murphy\u2019s Law without giving its origination much thought.\u00a0 But I think it was in reading the autobiography of Joe Kittinger that I may have found out the source.\u00a0 You see, as a young Air Force officer, Joe had worked for the legendary Col. John Stapp.\u00a0 I guess that name is another \u00a0one with which \u00a0many people are not familiar, but I\u2019m sure not one.\u00a0 In fact, at a recent family reunion, my brother, Larry, and I recalled the days when, as kids, he and I had watched in awe some black and white newsreel<\/h3>\n
\"murphys-law-2\"<\/a>
Col. Stapp on the Jet Sled.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

footage on our early television set.\u00a0 The footage was taken with 16mm gun cameras attached to a testing sled.\u00a0 The footage showed Col. Stapp as he conducted early experiments to determine what type of \u201cG\u201d force a human being could withstand.\u00a0 Col. Stapp was one of those great leaders who would never ask an underling to undergo anything which he would not do himself.\u00a0 So he strapped himself onto that sled and fired himself at high speed down those tracks, decelerating at the end with the sled digging into a trough of water and his face showing the incredible effects of G\u2019s and wind.\u00a0 To this day, only one person has performed as many tests on the jet sled as Col. Stapp and that is Mike Dennis, CEO of Oregon Aero.\u00a0 But Mike, very intelligently, used crash test dummies.\u00a0 Col. Stapp used himself!\u00a0 That decision wasn\u2019t so much a test of his intelligence as it was of his dedication and style of leadership.<\/h3>\n

But back then, Col. Stapp had a small crew who worked for him.\u00a0 Among that crew<\/h3>\n
\"murphy13\"<\/a>
Capt. Edward Murphy makes adjustments to the harness on the jet sled.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

was an engineer by the name of \u00a0Capt. Edward A. Murphy.\u00a0 There are varying accounts, but it seems that Murphy may have attached g-meters to Stapp\u2019s harness with their polarity reversed, rendering them useless.\u00a0 Stapp shrugged and referred to that action as another example of \u201cMurphy\u2019s Law\u201d.<\/h3>\n
\"The<\/a>
The ground crew assists Capt. Kittinger in removing his flight gear after the successful flight of Excelsior III. (U.S. Air Force photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Perhaps that law surfaced again, when Joe Kittinger set the world\u2019s record by parachuting from 102,800 feet in 1960.\u00a0 During that jump, one of his pressure suit\u2019s gloves leaked, leading to frostbite and a potential calamity.<\/h3>\n

I\u2019ve heard people curse Murphy\u2019s Law.\u00a0 They saw it as something lurking there, ready to bite them in the butt and louse up what they were trying to accomplish.<\/h3>\n

But perhaps Murphy\u2019s Law exists for a good reason, making more of us a bit more cautious so as not to become victims of it.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I\u2019d always accepted the existence of Murphy\u2019s Law without giving its origination much thought. But I think it was in reading the autobiography of Joe Kittinger that I may have found out the source.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,35,67,112,174],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}