Photo By Master Sgt. Alexandre Montes | Airmen of the 325th Maintenance Squadron crash recovery team pose for a portrait on a...... read more read more
Subscribe
Who do you turn to when a 155 mile-per-hour hurricane tosses an F-15 Strike Eagle yards away?
Airmen assigned to the 325th Maintenance Squadron crash recovery team at Tyndall Air Force Base have a duty to respond to Aircraft incidents on and off base. Their timely response aides in resuming operations while holding the safety of personnel first and minimizing damage to the aircraft.
When retrieving aircraft CDDAR Airmen must save the airframe integrity for safety investigations boards to accurately understand what happened. A learning lesson that not only improves actions at the base level but the Air Force Flying community also. But after Hurricane Michael in October 2018, Tyndall Airmen learned a new lesson.
“After the storm this is a completely different situation here for our Airmen,” said Tech Sgt. Christopher Florence, 325th MXS CDDAR flight chief.
After assessing the damages, Florence mentioned that surprisingly the most affected airframes were the static displays.
“It’s a very unique training opportunity and not a lot of people get to do this,” Florence said.
The crash and recovery Airmen didn’t have all the resources they normally have available when tasked with removing the damaged airframes at Flag Park. Instead the team relied on creativity and innovation to complete their mission.
With the airframes being already damaged, an investigation was not necessary. The next step was to innovate ways to take apart the planes and transport them, and the question was how.
“It was a big challenge for us and it took a lot of educated guessing to complete,” Florence said. “There’s no specific technical order on hand that explains what’s wrong with this airplane, we have to figure it out ourselves. Especially for a plane that has been sitting on a ‘stick’ for more than 20 years.”
Tech. Sgt. Cody Owen, 325th MXS CDDAR flight chief mentioned that they had certain dimensions we to work. The aircraft needed to be transported underneath power lines and through the front gate. A plan was devised to prevent any security and safety issues.
In one instance, they used wooden dunnage and a forklift to raise the wings of the aircraft. After which they began to get surgical. Piece by piece, bolt by bolt, the F-15 Strike Eagle was strip down to the fusel lodge. The team then needed to remove a stuck gear. So they proceeded to flip the aircraft and cut it out with a specialized saw – not a typical procedure for their line of work.
“Very few of them have dealt with real world scenarios like this, there’s a few but it has been very textbook situations,” Florence said. “We were able to do things that are just amazing and we capitalized the moment.”
Now that the aircraft was ready for transport, it was time to get back to their other duties. As crew chief here after the hurricane the Airmen also run the wheel and tire shop for the F-22 Raptor, T-38 Talon and the unmanned QF-16 training drones.
“Since we’re crew chiefs we are in charge of the basic post flight and preflight inspections for the F-22’s that are starting to arrive as well,” Owens said. ”So you can say we are the jack of all trades here.”
In the future, the crash and recovery team here will be heavily relied upon for post hurricane rebuilding.
“We’re going to have to be the guys who that actually bring the plane back over, lift it and put it back on the stand,” Florence said. “This training opportunity is very rare, crash and recovery doesn’t get a chance to do this every day.”
The lessons learned during this experience have provided the Airmen a new way of thinking to complete their mission. Giving them a new knowledge base for supporting not just their organization, but passing it along to other installations as well.
In an environment of rapid technological changes and challenges in every domain, Airmen have been with finding fresh and innovative ways to get the job done. In the midst of Tyndall AFB recovery, this team is ready for whatever comes their way.
| Date Taken: | 03.06.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 03.08.2019 17:00 |
| Story ID: | 313587 |
| Location: | TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, FL, US |
| Web Views: | 329 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Hurricane provides opportunities for innovation to crash and recovery Airmen, by MSgt Alexandre Montes, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
LEAVE A COMMENT