Posted on 03/01/2023 11:31:51 AM PST by Alas Babylon!
Something was off with a key component used to literally hold many U.S. Air Force aircraft together—and it resulted in the service grounding 207 vital aircraft according to a Time Compliance Technical Order issues in February.
No—it’s wasn’t the Air Force’s numerous F-16 tactical fighters. Nor its new F-35 stealth jets, or venerable B-52 bombers and A-10 ground attack jets.
Foremost, it was the workhorse keeping all of those planes refueled in the sky: the service’s airliner-based KC-135 Stratotanker. It also affected RC-135 and WC-135 surveillance aircraft extensively deployed to monitor the activity and technologies of foreign militaries (particularly China, North Korea, and Russia).
The offending items, first publicly revealed on February 9 in a memo posted onto an unofficial Facebook page associated with Air Force non-commissioned officers, are apparently “non-conforming” vertical pins. Two of these 5-inch pins are used to bear 90 percent of the load fixing the vertical stabilizer (ie. tail fin) on the C-135 family of aircraft. The failure of just one pin therefore would suffice to compromise its load-bearing capacity, causing the entire vertical stabilizer to... “depart the aircraft,” as the memo dryly puts it.
According to the memo, a metallurgical analysis of two “non-conformal pins” supplied by BlueDog Industries found flaws including “incorrect material, undersized dimensions, insufficient plating and lack of shot peening.” All 280 pins were recalled by the Air Force, but unfortunately, some had already been installed.
Pease 83-86
Incorrect material, undersized dimensions, insufficient plating and lack of shot peening.
Time to find who did the purchasing and how many houses he has.
When I was at Altus, the boxes were pretty good I think they won command awards for them. They actually had decent sub sandwiches and even salads with, of course, chicken.
March AFB was rumored to rummage through the dumpsters at KFC for their chicken.
Sometimes is just the purchasing agent but more often it is a politician that controls a purchasing agent.
time to name the company that supplied and manufactured.
Be interested if domestic or foreign
The mystery meat sandwiches were special. We’d get box-nasties when someone decided we were too busy to break for meals at the chow hall. A collective groan would go up. One time, a guy got the nod to count people and call up the in-flight kitchen for the first time. I guess he got the NCOIC on the phone, and asked for X box nasties The NCO lit into him pretty good, got his name, and when our meals arrived, his was prominently marked with his name. It contained chicken bones, orange peels, an empty chip bag., and wadded up napkins. Good times.
Yes and prosecute the guilty examples must be made.
My tail failed one time.
I had a nasty crack up.
5.56mm
It takes two to do the deal charge both.
Our loadmaster could mix and match the contents for some pretty tasty food. He made layered spaghetti lasagna, a tossed salad and garlic bread that a 5 star restaurant would envy.
Bless you TSgt Stevenson wherever you are.
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“According to the memo, a metallurgical analysis of two “non-conformal pins” supplied by BlueDog Industries found flaws including “incorrect material, undersized dimensions, insufficient plating and lack of shot peening.” All 280 pins were recalled by the Air Force, but unfortunately, some had already been installed.”
This is from the article.
Hard to tell if the pin supplier or the metallurgical analysis is BlueDog Industries.(looks like the pin supplier from my perspective)
BlueDog looks domestic, but take it with a “grain of salt” who actual manufactured it. Domestic suppliers usually have a variety of sources.
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