6 Civil Mechanics

The Plany Guide of the FFAA of the USAF recommended  that for a squadron of 18 planes a total of 290 specialists were needed for the maintenance, without any other duties, with 8 hours of daily work. This would require a work schedule of 11,600 hours per week, and since there were 21 airplanes, the hours would go up to 13,522.

After June of 1969, after the collaborating companies left, the remaining specialiced personnel were only 214 doing  an average of 6 daily hours, or 6.420 hours per week, which meant a reduction of disponible working  hours for the maintenance of over 50% of what was needed.

Besides having to do the maintenace work of the MTU and the 524 Section of the Base.

Even with the reduction of personnel,  the same proportional rhythm  of flight hours was continued, which required a major effort by the Maintenance group, outdoing themselves to the point where the lack of personnel was hardly felt.

The goal was to achieve 20 Hours of flight per plane/month, which it signified a production of 5.040 hours of flight per year, or about 420 hour per month, however, the actual hours accomplished were a lot lower than these numbers.

This lack of flight hours, placed in danger the pilot training and their aptitude for combat and in many instances the instruction of the Plans of Instruction had to be altered to the  extent that some flights had to cancelled during certain periods in order to have flight hours available for some exercise, maneuvers, etc.  

This was one of the two principal reasons for the low efficiency of the Maintenance, the lack of personnel and the other was the difficulties encountered in the supply of replacement parts.

We can see in the following table, data of the precarious situation, this data covers until 1968:

These 3.181 elements were about 70% of the total of the orders plazed and were still waiting for delivery.

As for the elements needing repairs outside of the Base shops, due to a revision of Step 3, they were received in very small proportion, having been returned by the end of 1968 only 112 out of 3.564 that were in Step 3, that being only 4.14%.

This would make for a situation of AOCP and EOCP too high :

To all of the above, it must be added the inconvenience of the many elements ordered that were not supplied from the USAF channels because they were considered as local purchases, but it was impossible to find them in the Spanish market.

Therefore, the different causes of low level of the Maintenance were:

            -    The problems previously named

            -    The low level of the Logistic System

-    The lack of replacements parts in SMAMA

-    The complex systems of petitions

-    The differences transmission and procedures between the USAf and the EA.

-    The low priority that the USAF gave to the Spanish orders.

-    The extremely long time for the transport of the elements.

The periodic inspections  that corresponded to the First Step on preflight and postflight and the ones to be done on the Second Step were done at their own installations and shops at the Torrejon Air Base.

But as always, they did not coincide with the schedule of required functioning hours of the engine and aircraft :

-    Engine: 100, 200, 300, 400

-    Aircraft: 25, 50, 100, 200, 400

As a result there was a duplication of inactivity of the airplanes, because inspections of the engine or the plane 

The Third Step, it had to be performed  every 5 years or after 1,000 hours of flight, and could not be done in any of the Base installations or by any of the companies within Spain for lack of the equipment, therefore, a contract was signed with the company FUS (Germany) which did all the IRAN in almost all F-104s in Europe.

Subsequently, the time to pass through the IRAN was increased to 6 years and 1,000 hours of flight.

And finally in 1970 according to the data and statistics that were accumulated during the life of the F-104G in Spain, it was opted to lengthen to 7 years or 1,200 hours of flight.

Due to the lenghtening of the periods for the IRAN, only a few F-104Gs passed the tests , among them are the following :       

Even though the requirements of Maintenance were followed, which was to have the airplanes flight in  sequential steps so as to not accumulate the inspections, it was difficult to accomplish because of the great number of aircraft at AOCP, as a consequence, the only option left was to fly the available planes with the  result that  bottlenecks were produced by the accumulation of planes in inspection and reduce even more the flights.

All of this resulted in the application of a not desirable plan of cannibalization, interchanging parts and elements between airplanes, which supposes an increment of labor. But, if it had not been for the not desired cannibalization, there would have been a higher number of airplanes in AOCP.

 Another item that added to the precarious situation of Maintenance was the incorporation of Technical Orders which affected the security of flight. These Orders had to be implemented and modifications to the aircraft made, in the moment of their appearance, with the consequence of grounding many more airplanes until their implementation.

Facing the grave situation in which the F-104Gs in Spain found themselves, in 1969 an emergency line was stablished for the supply of repair parts (EPL). By means of this line, petition of orders directly with the Lockheed Company could be made. Later, the companies Litton and General Electric were added to this line.   

By using this emergency line, numerous situations of AOCP, ENFE and EOCP were resolved, even though this emergency line had a limitation of $20.000 per month.