I was in the USAF from 1951 to 1980. I started out as a 30150 airborne
radio mechanic and went to aviation cadets and spent the rest of my
career flying fighters (except when a desk caught me for 4 years.) AFM
66-1 (Socialized maintenance) came in to my view about 1959. Prior to
that I'd been in outfits with their own maintenance. It was workig
pretty well at RG AFB but we only had one squadron there a big one
with about 34 F/TF102As. From there I went to teh 332 FIS/F102 at
Thule and here it bit us in the butt. Our flying schedule was by tail
number and printed out a month in advance. Any deviation was a gig. We
had half a squadron - 10 F102s. If one went down for extended
maintenance and you were scheduled to fly it - too bad. You sat on the
ground. My next assigment was the 319FIS/F104A at Homestead. We had a
600 man outfit with 30 F104A/Bs. No 66-1 - we all worked for the same
man. The 319th had the best maintenance bar none I ever saw in the
USAF. Our in-commission rate was always over 94%. The only problems we
experienced were tired engines and AOCP. Then I went down the road to
the 31TFW, same base, and F4s and 66-1 'Sacumcised' maintenance. The
concept originated in SAC where they scheduled B52s about once a week
and had 168 hours to get the thing ready to go. the control process
was far too slow and unwieldy to generate fighters and fly them twice
a day. (In the 319th we once flew 65 sorties in about four hours -
supersonic to and from the target! and 15 minute turnarounds. 15
minute missions were common.) Morale was low because the DM and the DO
were at each other's throats. This was also at a time when
'management' was prime - and sonmeone forgot about leadership.
Apparently the Harvard Business School hadn't incorporated it into the
syllabus.
Yes, 66-1 was very efficient as to manning; unfortunately the gain in
manpower resources was a loss on the flightline maintenance response
because we lost a lot of time waiting for specialists to arrive at the
airplane. (And the F4 was a maintenance hog - at DaNang we were
running about 53 M/Hr per flying hour!)
One of the big problems was unquantifiable - the 'gung-ho' spirit that
in 66-1 was almost ignored, except by perceptive senior officers - of
which there was a dearth. I took that to heart when I got a squadron -
(68TFS/Homestead and later 390TFS/DaNang). I used the 'walking around'
theory and it really paid off. You got to get all the guys reading off
the same page and singing the same tune. Back in the States at
Homestead 76-80 we were under TAC 'whateveritwas' that put the AGS
'units' with the fighter squadrons (same color hats and badges) and
disolved 31MMS (I commanded it for about 6 months) and gave the
bombloaders something to do besides load planes - they became deputy
assistant whatevers to the crewchiefs. The flightline guys also
learned how to help the specialists, like open and close the bird as
nee3ded before the 'specs' got there. A lot of cross-training was
involved and it really helped maintain the birds and - ta-da! sparked
morale. I was Chief of QC then because of a request from an old
colleague who was the DM. (I also got to fly test hops besides subbing
as a 307th IP.) Anyway he was getting worn down; so was I; in 1980 we
both thought Cawtah was going to be reelected and we were out of parts
for our 120 F4s and about 2/3 manned in skills and 4/3 manned in FNGs
so we both bailed out in April of 80. It had stopped being fun when I
saw an Estimated Delivery Date 21 months in the future for one of our
AOCP F4Es. (We had 4 real hangar queens - they were missing about 250
items apiece we'd canned for other birds and awaiting parts for them.
'Consolidated Cannery' ships, I called them. And that was what was
documented! It was/is not unknown for gung-ho crewchiefs to make
midnight requisitions to get their own bird airborne. Swap parts -
don't leave the hole vacant! And if you want to be really 'honest'
write it up as inop and sign a fake name. Not that I ever did that . .
..) FWIW once I put my papers in my blood pressure went down 20 points.
One thing - with the parts and manning problems I knew we were going
to lose airplanes but there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.
Well, we did, but the crews got out okay. Thank God. One of them was
me.
Walt BJ