TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- Brig. Gen. Mark Johnson recently honored a special 12-member team of civilian and military maintenance and repair experts that deployed to a Middle East air base to rescue a stranded and critically unsafe aerial refueling tanker.
The Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center commander visited the shop floor of the 564th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron recently to personally thank the team. The members stabilized a dangerous long crack as wide as up to half an inch that made the KC-135R unsafe for takeoff or landing.
“This was a big project that our Air Force really needed us to get our arms around,” the general said to about 40 squadron members and others gathered in front of a line of KC-135s undergoing major overhauls in Bldg. 3001.
“Just like the world-class professionals that you are, you stood up and delivered,” Johnson continued. “We ask an awful lot of you guys and every single time you deliver it. I just thought we’d just take a few moments to publicly say thank you for delivering big time for Air Mobility Command and the United States Air Force.”
Air Force maintainers at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, discovered the crack late last year that weakened a metal trunnion support rib, said Jordan Johnston, team member and the lead structural engineer who designed the repair.
“It had a massive crack in it,” he said. “It’s where the main landing gear mounts to the wing, so it was pretty important piece of structure. The danger was that we could crack it all the way through and collapse the gear on takeoff or landing.”
The temporary repair involved forcing the crack back together and then fastening on two half-inch-thick steel plates, or doublers, on either side of it. The sandwiching of the crack added the strength needed to get the plane back in the air safely, Johnston said.
Deployed maintainers can repair many aircraft problems in the field, but don’t have the resources and expertise for depot-level repairs such as major structural damage. The 76th Aircraft Maintenance Group’s Expeditionary Depot Maintenance Flight at Tinker AFB routinely travels the globe to repair heavily damaged aircraft.
Project planners anticipated that the temporary repairs could involve the relatively “easy” repair using the doublers or more complex work involving replacing the support rib. The rare step of adding civilian maintainers to the EDMX team was taken to support any possible outcome. All the equipment, tools and access fixtures for the repairs also were flown to Al Udeid.
Master Sgt. Benjamin Sklenar, the deployment lead, said civilian maintainers rarely accompany EDMX’s missions to Area of Responsibility deployment zones. Al Udeid is a major support base for Middle East combat operations.
“This one’s unique because it’s going to the AOR and having all the requirements of getting the civilians qualified on firing rifles, chemical warfare protection – all the things that civilians don’t have to get qualified on. They had a learning curve.”
Johnston said his run-up included a “full barrage” of shots, including an anthrax vaccine. The three-day repair was the simplest of the possible outcomes, which could have involved up to six weeks of work, Johnston said.
“The experience was good for us because we were prepared for the damages they’d shown us previously and we had so much extra equipment and parts,” he said. “We had the expertise handy to handle everything else that could have come up. We had the cleanest, smoothest, simplest repair we could have asked for.”
The repairs allowed the plane, tail number 58-0099, to be flown back to Tinker and placed in the Programmed Depot Maintenance line for a major overhaul. The plane was already scheduled to arrive at Tinker this summer for its scheduled depot maintenance.
The team members received a certificate of appreciation from Brig. Gen. Darren James, commander of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, Al Udeid Air Base. Members also included:
Tech. Sgt. George Ketchum; Staff Sgt. Lance Synova; Staff Sgt. Jeremy Garrett; Tech. Sgt. Sascha Newberry; and maintainers Rex Abbott, Michael Smith, Kevin Becker, Derek Baptiste, Steve Guinn and Eric Allison.