When I was born, the second world war was at its peak and the teutonic war machine at that time in 1940 seemed triumphant for its
initial military successes. Our country became completely isolated, like a neutral hedgehog surrounded by the evil axis-forces.

There were many shortages during these Years which were efficiently overcome with a well organized home food production called:
« Anbauschlacht » initiated by Prof. F.T. Wahlen. Every Patch of land, including parks and sports fields were transformed into wheat fields,  potato- and cabbage patches. But as a small kid I never realized such difficulties during those times, we lived in peace and I was well protected from the world of the battle fileds and the propaganda noise all around our country.

With the end of world war II in 1945 the first reluctant comeback of tourism could be observed. I started school, which I never really liked, although it proved to be necessary for me as a single boy getting adapted to society and to accept all my fellow students wherever they came from. In my teens I occasionally developed my own ideas and could be a little rebel, thus I have been quite a troublesome boy, but I think that my mother enjoyed it most of the time. I owe a lot to her, for she was the person who thaught me almost everything in my life, because my father rarely showed much interest in my youthful interests or my constant questioning – he was in his fifties when I was born although he did a lot and he worked hard for the sake of his family, he lost everything a couple of times and each time he would start again, without giving up. In the postwar era most youngsters admired the liberators of Europe; the Americans, the Canadians and in particular the British who were the first to return as tourists and for mountain climbing in Switzerland. Therefore almost all of my generation were eager to learn English - and I had been no exception – I accomplished this in my spare time and eventually managed to achieve the lower Oxford degree in due course. Unlike other boys at that time, my target was to become a railroad dispatcher or a station master, but I was very disappointed when the jury of an SBB-selection team turned me down, (argueing that, with sixteen Years of age, I still seemed much too young for this job). Therefore I changed my line when I was offered an apprenticeship as automobile-technician and six Years later I had passed all the qualifications, including all the military standards training with the motorized transport divison of the Swiss army.

During my educational period I worked hard to finance my glider-flying lessons, this finally earmarked my devotion to aviation and following this, I applied for a job in the line-maintenance of Swissair’s technical department at Zurich airport. I succeeded and it became my trademark throughout the rest of my life which I never regretted. The airline business also offered me the opportunity to travel worldwide which emphasized my cosmopolitan attitude.
Consequently I was in sharp contrast to the close devotion of most Swiss to their country, although the modern state of Switzerland originated back in 1848;  in the period of a romantic nationalism. We are not a nation-state, and the Swiss are not usually considered to form a single Ethnic group, but a confederacy (or Willens-nation, consociational state), which is a a term coined in conscious contrast to "nation" in the ethnic sense of the term.

In the eighties my career in the line maintenance culminated with a temporary deployment to the Douglas aircraft factory in Long Beach CA. where I worked as a quality inspector during the production of DC9/MD-80 and DC-10 aircraft. This was a great experience and back in the home base I was asked to join the technical training department as a maintenance instructor – which was absolutely motivating for me to go back to basics again and start learning all over, enabling me to communicate my knowledge to fellow specialists and engineers.

Between the eighties and the nineties Swissair opted for a simple short range aircraft and opted upon the re-development of a proven airframe: the Fokker F28 - which was marketed as the F-100 with new RR-TAY-Turbofans, revised Avionics and a stretched fuselage.

Unfortunately the aircraft also had a couple of weak spots owing to its vintage design and it did not fit Swissair's fleet infrastructure well enough, besides of its excessive operational costs. Thus the F-100 was phased out after only a decade of operation.

On the other hand, the image of the good old 747 which had always been a passengers favorite began to fade away, and with the aging of its airframe,  maintenance and fuel costs became too much for the operator.

Finally Swissair committed itself to the Airbus family: the venerable short to medium range A319 up to the A321. They are easy to handle for
the drivers, yet sometimes rather complex for maintenance crews until all its highly sophisticated digital systems were fully understood:
Does therefore the richness of vocabulary in their manuals have something to do with aeronautical progress? Comparing English and French translations at Toulouse which seem to take up much more space in the marketing brochures.
For example this:
"Improved turbine efficiency and fuel consumption by closer control of turbine/shroud tip clearance" e.g. :  "Amélioration du rendement de la
turbine et de la consommation de carburant grâce à une maitrise plus efficace du jeu d'extremité d'aubeturbine/anneau d'étancheité.
Just think how far ahead we all would be in engine economy if we had verbal economy too...  Absolument…. for this reason simplified English was re-invented for aviation in Toulouse:

Yet, the Airbus manufacturers came to terms with their excellent products and over the Years they even managed to overtake their archrival Boeing in production figures and even their largest one, the A-380 turned out to be a big success after its maiden flight 2005.

Only our favorite little big airline: Swissair failed, due to the incompetence of their managemant and had to file bankruptcy in 2002 which resulted in a fleetwide grounding… a very sad finale indeed.
But life continues and the saying goes:  « The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man » = by George Bernard Shaw.  Finally I retired officially from the dream of my life in December 2003, but I remained in a reserve status as a freelancer maintenance instructor until 2010 – and now remaining a member of the Swiss Air Force Museum and additionally I joined the Fokker Team for helping with their vintage aircraft…