Coming to the end of Exercise Joint Thunder

The exercise is almost coming to an end and I will be leaving South Dakota with the rest of the guys on Thursday. Same old thing, flying in a Chinook out of Rapid City to Kansas, Garden City for an over night stay before flying back to Dallas. So far so good, everything went smoothly for me in this exercise. No screw up whatsoever. Well, maybe could relate a bit of an incident that we learn today.

2 days ago, there was a forecast of tornadoes hitting our operating base and we got to evacuate our Chinooks to Ellsworth Air Force Base for shelter. I was one of the few guys ordered to accompany on flight to Ellsworth Air Force Base. Along the way, I already spotted lots of Chinook helicopters from the US Army landing in the Air Base for Shelter. We landed and went on to tow the aircraft into the hanger. The hanger was smaller than expected thus we got to parallel park 2 Chinook into it else the hanger door will not be able to close at all. With both Chinook rotorblades inter meshing each other, our guys managed to get the birds in safe and sound. Took lots of care to execute the parking maneuver with many pair of eyes watching out for obstruction and collision.

Today, from our daily briefing, I learn that one of the US Army Chinook suffered rotor blade damage, structural damage to the tunnel cover and damage to the Synchronizing shaft when in a hurry to evacuate, someone left a tool around the forward rotorhead. The bird flew and the tool got knock and spun around by the rotor blade turning at 225rpm, flew and damaged the aircraft in flight. Good thing their Chinook landed without an accident.

There maybe lots of policy in RSAF that I am not convinced of or do not even wanna support it or sometimes bend the rules a bit or find it extremely stupid and inefficient but TOOLS CONTROL top my list of policy that I will always support as long as I am in the aviation line. The incident of the US Army Chinook as written above highlight how critical tools control is in aviation maintenance. Life can be lost as a result of misplaced tools on the aircraft and for the reason that I sometime got to be on the flight makes it even more personal to ensure nothing is left behind that could jeopardize my life (or career).

Heres a picture of our Chinook supporting the US Army Combat Engineer to construct a bridge across the river during exercise Joint Thunder 2007. Don't think its a restricted picture at all cause there are so many civilian taking picture of our Chinook and the US Army Chinook laying the bridge across the water. Unfortunately we never got the chance to see the finish product.

The pickup....

The Hauling...

The Delivery...

The part of a bridge.