Crew installs wing on T-45 Goshawk. (Photo courtesy of Richard ‘Bush Hog’ Nelson) South Texas workforce Too often we bemoan the lack of a globally competitive workforce in our area, and I’m guilty more than most. But there are also times when we need to celebrate extraordinary work performed by our South Texas workers, in particular the work done by a combination team made up of the Navy, Boeing and L-3 Vertex.

To begin the story we need to go back to 1997 when T-45 Goshawk A077 rolled off the Boeing assembly line in St. Louis with Naval Air Station Kingsville as the destination. All flight checks were completed and the aircraft was officially delivered to the Navy in Kingsville and designated as Aircraft 273.

In December of the same year, with only 355 flight hours logged, A077 blew both main tires during a catapult launch while conducting carrier operations off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida. Without functioning front tires the plane couldn’t head back to the carrier, so it was diverted to NAS Mayport for an emergency landing.

T-45 removed from preservation to begin Phase 2 disassembly. (Photo courtesy of Richard Nelson) T-45 Workforce Talk about “pucker factor,” you’re a student naval aviator in the middle of carrier qualifications and you’re going to try and land an airplane sans functioning front tires.

Emergency procedures at NAS Mayport were initiated and the runway was set up for a shore-based arrested landing.

Now the story gets really sticky. The pilot, obviously a little nervous, over-shoots the arresting cable so the field arrestment attempt fails. At high speed, on deflated and out-of-round tires, the aircraft hits the runway with greatly reduced aircraft stability and eventually departs the runway surface.

L-3 mechanic works on shear deck panel repair. (Photo courtesy of Richard Nelson) With everything happening so quickly, the unexpected aviator missed the only opportunity to eject and was left with no other alternative but to ride it out – staying in the cockpit as the aircraft flipped over and came to rest upside down.

Here’s where the story of quality workmanship begins.

Within days a team from Boeing, all NAS Kingsville employees, traveled to Mayport and started disassembling the plane to transport it back to Kingsville. The wing, vertical and horizontal stabilizers, engine and all pyrotechnics had to be removed before the damaged aircraft was placed on trucks for the 1,100 mile trek to the T-45 Depot at NAS Kingsville.

Boeing and the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) engineering team used LASER tracking technology to determine the damage sustained by the incident. Then the aircraft was disassembled for visual and dimensional inspections of critical structural areas, and a replacement parts list was developed.

Location new dorsal fairing on aircraft. (Photo courtesy of Richard Nelson) In the middle of Boeing’s effort to return the aircraft to flying status, they lost their bid for the T-45 Contractor Logistics Support contract and turned the “touch labor” portion over to the new incoming contactor, L-3 Vertex.

That meant two separate contracts to return A077 to flyable status were awarded. Boeing became responsible for repair definition via engineering drawings, design, fabrication and setup of unique tooling, on and offsite support during the actual repair as needed, and compilation of a final technical presentation. The second contact was issued to L-3 Vertex, who would be responsible for ordering replacement parts, implementing repairs and the major task of reassembling the aircraft and ensuring flight worthiness.

During the repairs L-3 Vertex used all outstanding technical directives in bringing A077 to current T-45A configuration.

Twelve years after the crash, A077 completed several flight checks and was certified as “full mission capable.” The plane was turned over to the Chief of Naval Air Training Oct. 1, 2009 and added to the T-45A inventory of aircraft at NAS Kingsville.

After completing 63 flight hours the plane was inducted into the Required Avionics Modernization Program (RAMP) at NAS Kingsville, transforming the aircraft instrumentation from analog to digital multifunction color displays. A077 was then re-designated from a T-45A to T-45C.

On August 20, 2010, Aircraft A077/273 once again took to the skies over Kingsville, providing the Navy, Marine Corps and the American taxpayer with a new T-45C at a fraction the cost of a new model.

None of this would have happened without the men and women of Boeing and L-3 Vertex bringing their extraordinary talents to the job at NAS Kingsville, depot for the T-45 Goshawk.

So next time someone grumbles about the quality of the local workforce remind them of A077, the plane rescued from the junkyard by the NAS Kingsville Team.

Thanks to them that huge federal defense budget shrunk a little.