ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam -- Throughout Operation Christmas Drop’s 65 years, C-130s have been taking off, aircrews have been delivering bundles of donated goods to the remote islands around the Pacific and at the end of every mission the OCD team has celebrated hard-earned success. The amount of work it takes to make it all happen is hard to imagine; sometimes it seems only a miracle can pull everything together. One of Santa’s secrets to success, the 374th Maintenance Group, gets the job done through a bond within their team and a special love for the big, old birds they push into the sky every day.

What I saw on the Andersen Air Force Base flight line during OCD was a group of dedicated Airmen supporting each other and putting their hands and hearts into their work. C-130s may be a handful, but everyone was ready and eager to step up and help out in any way, even if that meant doing a task to which they weren’t accustomed.

“Here at OCD, we’re a very tight-knit group,” said 374 MXS crew chief Senior Airman Benjamin Campanella, or “Camp” as his team calls him. “We get a sense of family because we do everything together. It’s good to get that bond.”

During the time I spent with the 374th Maintenance Group team, I saw them inspect, prepare and marshal one aircraft after another. Every time an aircraft was ready to taxi for takeoff, a maintainer would give it a last pat or even a kiss on the nose before marshaling.

“We really do put blood, sweat and tears into these birds,” Campanella said. “Every one of us has been banged up while working on them before.”

Campanella talked about the bond maintainers tend to form with aircraft and the different personalities the planes have. Some "pout," or start having problems in different situations. According to Campanella one of the OCD planes prefers to be on mission and will start getting grumpy when it has to go home.

"We do get attached to them," Campanella said. "We're sad to see a plane leave. Unless it was a bad plane. Planes are like people: sometimes they just need a pat on the back, sometimes a kick in the pants."

Superstition is a curious aspect of maintainer culture.

"Ask any maintainer," Campanella said. "If you become a maintainer, you start to get superstitious."

When one of the OCD aircraft began to malfunction, Campanella took off the Christmas elf hat he had been wearing.

"Every time I marshal with this hat on she starts pouting," Campanella said. "She just doesn't like the hat."

Campanella talked about how B-1 crew chiefs won't pull out the marshaling kit until right before it's time to taxi because if the plane sees it, it will break.

According to Campanella, some crew chiefs develop a sixth sense with an aircraft. They know when a plane is going to return broken or when it's going to start pouting.

When planes do pout and break, however, their maintainers are ready and willing to fix them.

One morning, I watched as the maintenance team generated the last aircraft and began to break for lunch. However, prior to takeoff, the last plane’s engine malfunctioned. Despite their hunger, not one maintainer complained or hesitated. With a shout of “Alright, let’s go!” they sped back to the heat of the flight line and hastily began working together to prepare a new plane.

The 374 MXG team had the backup C-130H up and gone within two hours, allowing the aircrew to accomplish critical training objectives while delivering Christmas gifts to anxious islanders.

What’s the secret to their success?

“We’re a very hard working team,” Campanella said. “If someone’s out here working, everyone else pitches in. There’s only so many people who can be on a job at one time, but everyone always wants to help each other out. When you get a good group of people together that know their jobs and that love working together, they can really do amazing things. That’s my favorite part of the job: when something’s broken and we have to get something moving quick, that’s the best.”

From crawling under the aircraft to working in tight spaces, some of Campanella’s favorite parts of the job don’t look easy.

“As far as jobs that contort your body, it’s probably gymnasts first, ballerinas and then maintainers,” Campanella said with a laugh. “Maintenance puts your body in insanely unnatural positions, but when you gotta get a jet off the ground you gotta do what you gotta do.”

Maybe one of the reasons that the team works well together is because they share a common affection.

“This is what we train for,” Campanella said. “Being here is what all the preparation, training and long hours are for. Doing things like this is why we all joined.”

Spending time with the OCD 2016 team was genuinely a pleasure. It’s easy to feel good about being part of a Christmas delivery mission but enjoying the work that goes into it can be a different matter. I saw the frustration, sweat and pain that goes into keeping planes in the sky. When a group of people goes through that kind of struggle and at the end of the day they can still say that they love their team and their job, there must be something truly special involved.