I was at an executive committee meeting once, long ago, and heard a delightful story from a gentleman from Bell Labs while sitting in his living room decorated with a long thread carpet in which a crocodile appeared to glide.
There had been a software glitch that caused a computer on a ship to fire at another American ship. While quickly recognized, it had to be fixed. The programmer was awakened in the middle of the night, brought to an official car in his pajamas and hustled to an airport where he was put into a helicopter and winched down to a ship. He was told he HAD to fix the bug. He did, and wondered how they were going to return him home.
They explained that they weren’t. Even though he gave them the fix code, they insisted on dropping him on EVERY ship that needed the fix personally. He was a long time getting home. I don’t remember if he was still in pjs.
I worked with a guy who fixed an elevator on an aircraft carrier. Not a complicated or difficult fix, but he knew how to fix it. They had a special flight to put him on, but took him off space available. He was an hourly guy, not salaried, so he was being paid time and a half from the minute he left home until he got back.
I worked with a guy named Ken Olsen (not the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), and not a relative of his) at Raytheon Wayland, about five miles south of DEC world HQ. He was also hourly. One day they flew him out to Beale AFB on a corporate jet to fix a problem on the PAVE PAWS station there.