During the escalation of the Vietnam War, the Air Force ran short of jet transports and decided to pull a bunch of WW2 era propeller transports out of mothballs and put them back in service. The mechanics, however, complained that they followed the instructions to the letter on tuning the engines but could not get them to develop the power they were supposed to.
The AF finally hired a bunch of old WW2 airplane mechanics. Those mechanics never looked at the manual, they just listened to the engine, made few adjustments, and the engines were soon singing at full power.