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Aviation History
1979
1979 - 4046.PDF
1492 FLIGHT International, 3 November 1979 92nd and 510th operate from Sembach and the 78th is working up at Ahlhorn. Once all four Fols are active, Sembach will become 510's Fol. Two more units, the 509th and 511th, will arrive at Bentwaters next summer, making the 81st the biggest USAF Wing, with 108 A-lOs. Perhaps as unique as the A-10 itself is the maintenance set-up. Fols mean forward basing, rearward maintenance. Bentwaters has the main spares stock but Sembach is con nected by computer to the main operating base. Shortages are therefore notified to Bentwaters as they occur. Sem bach does not have the equipment to perform major main tenance on the A-lOs and relies on a Crl50 lifeline from Bentwaters. At the moment the Hercules visits three times a week but this could become daily once the other Fols open up. For major maintenance Bentwaters sends over personnel, equipment and parts by C-130. This is in keep ing with the austere base philosophy—that the permanent personnel are there to generate sorties. The A-10 is designed for the sortie surge with most of the inspection panels within reach of a man standing on the ground. An automatic loading system has been de signed for rapid reload of the 1,350-round GAU-8/A ammu nition drum. Peacetime turnaround time is about l^hr but the A-10 has shown devastating mission generation per formance on numerous occasions. The 81st has flown 86 sorties with 18 aircraft in one day while two US-based A-lOs recorded 34 sorties in llhr. Wartime sorties in Europe would last one to two hours and may involve striking more than one target. The A-10 has a 250 n.m. combat radius, enough to reach from a Fol to the East German border and move on to a target in northern Ger many. The limit to sortie generation has proved to be pilot fatigue. After three combat missions the pilot's per formance begins to drop. Fairchild has exceeded all USAF maintenance and relia bility requirements. Meantime between failures is three to four hours—the Air Force asked for 1 • 78hr. Main tenance manhours per flight hour are now down to 17 compared with the 21hr specified by the USAF. The ser vice also requires 60 per cent of the A-lOs to be opera tional at all times. Within Tactical Air Command at Mytle Beach, Florida, the availability has been generally better than the requirement. The 81st TFW has demonstrated ten per cent better operability despite problems with the auxiliary power unit and the European weather. Only the A-lOs at Davis-Montham have failed to reach the target but training units never do. The maintenance crews at Sembach like the simple A-10, especially in contrast to the F-4, and find its human engineering hard to fault. A-10 pilots must learn the art of a level turn, as a vertical bank puts the The ground is not a blur to pilots at the A-10's operational speed The A-10 has had a number of improvements since it entered service. Most important to the European A-10 rider is the approval for installation of an inertial navigation system. (INS). Visual navigation at low altitude is diffi cult, as landmarks are often obscured by intervening hills and forests. Forward operating bases allow pilots to memorise their patch and devise devious routes to initial points from which they will be vectored on to targets. INS will allow the A-10 to make best use of terrain mask ing without having to pop-up once in a while to look for a church steeple. Improving the A-10 began with a new zero-zero Aces II ejection seat—a great improvement over the earlier Esca- pac, according to the pilots. An audible stall warning has been added to cope with the very docile stall and lack of indication. The device has two sounds, one indicates peak turning performance, the other impending stall. Peak performance comes at nine-tenths maximum lift and 21 angle-of-attack units and corresponds to a 4,0O0ft diameter turning circle. From aircraft 152, Tracor flare and chaff dispensers have been fitted. In all, 16 dispensers are located under the wingtip cusps and on the undercarriage fairings. Attacking A-lOs will probably make liberal use of counter- measures, hence the sizeable payload. From aircraft 184 onwards an instrument landing system has been fitted. Aircraft 202 and subsequent have a number of improve ments from more brake energy for aborted take-offs wingtip 25ft nearer the ground than the cockpit •'$%
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