The pungent smell of jet fuel that once welcomed former Marine Corps mechanic Barry Elkins to work at the hangar has given way to the throaty rumble of a finely-tuned radial engine on a Galveston, Texas, flight line.

Two years ago, the 38-year-old Elkins first picked up a wrench as a line mechanic for the vintage World War II aircraft at Galveston’s Lone Star Flight Museum. Despite his upbringing on kerosene-guzzling fast-movers, he said the change is just fine with him.

Elkins got started as a mechanic early. Growing up, he took apart drills and anything else he could get his hands on "just to see how it worked," he said. He went into the Marine Corps to work on jets, "and I’m telling you, I really did love that smell of jet fuel in the morning."

Ten years spent working on A-4 Skyraiders, F-4 Phantoms, A-6 Intruders, the Harrier jump jets, and, of course, the F/A-18 Hornet–and everything from powerplants to airframes and subsystems–gave Elkins plenty of experience fixing things that fly.

After the Marines, Elkins said, he never hesitated about staying in the aviation maintenance business and sought jobs that would round out his military training with civilian experience.

Jobs in Dallas and in Houston provided experience working on an array of corporate and private aircraft. A similar opportunity brought the Texan to Galveston.

But Galveston has always been something of a roller coaster ride for the aviation trade–that is, if one doesn’t fly for the offshore oil industry. When the local FBO that employed Elkins started having problems, he walked over one day to the neighboring Lone Star Flight Museum and filled out an application as a hedge for the future.

About six months later, the museum’s director of maintenance, Joe Prokop, walked over to the FBO and asked if Elkins was still interested. "I said sure," Elkins said. "That was that."

The more Elkins worked on the round-motored monsters whose efforts helped win World War II, the more attached he became to not just the powerplants, but to the airplanes.

People laugh when he refers to the airplanes as "his girls" but Elkins said the title fits. "Just like girls, they all have different personalities, they all start different even when they have the same engines, they all feel different and they all act differently," he said. "It’s also an honor to work on them. They are history and they are the reason we are here today."

Unlike slightly more modern, higher-tech aircraft, the objects of Elkins’s attention have special needs. One doesn’t just ring up parts suppliers and order whatever might be needed.

A case in point is the current restoration of the museum’s vintage Douglas SBD Dauntless, whose pilot was recently forced to belly the aircraft when a broken fuel line caused the engine to quit.

"A lot of the parts we need, you can’t get unless you make them," Elkins explained.

To repair the Dauntless, the Galveston museum sent teams to the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida and The Dixie Wing of the Commemorative Air Force in Atlanta, Georgia to take photos and make measurements of the parts need. Museum mechanics also worked with blueprints obtained from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.

The payoff on such detective work comes when someone comes upon an airplane that has been put back together with parts that the maintenance team had to make and says, "That airplane really looks good!"

"That’s when what we do really means the most to us," Elkins said.

Unlike the Smithsonian’s collection, which doesn’t fly anymore, Lone Star’s does. Elkins said that is a tall order.

"It’s a challenge to be a preservationist, restorationist, and historian all at the same time, because we are interested in keeping the airplanes flying and as close to their original conditions as possible," Elkins said. "We get about 30 or 40 people through here most every day and they always want to talk to the mechanics. We have to be up on the history of the airplanes, as well as being able to work on them."

Asked if he planned to hold true to the career path that brought him to Galveston by moving on after getting his share of experience working on the warbirds, Elkins just shook his head.

"The pay here may not be what it is over at the airlines, but, yeah, this is my dream job," he said. "I think I have found my home."–By Bob Howie