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Show 5W Curtis has carried By Freida Sickinger tool box since 1966 F-- 4 - Col. Lewis G. Curtis is Director of Maintenance for the Ogden Air Logistics Center, an organization of 6,700-plu- s civilian and military employees. He has held this position since Oct. 17, 1977. Since his commissioning in 1955, his entire career has been in the avionics maintenance, maintenance staff officer and maintenance supervisory fields. HIS PRIOR ASSIGNMENTS have included service at MacDill AFB, Fla., Bunker Hill AFB, Ind., Headquarters Strategic Air Command (SAC), Offutt AFB, Neb., Bitburg AB, Germany, Korat Royal Thai AB, Thailand; Headquarters Air Force, the Pentagon and Headquarters USAFE, Europe, always in the maintenance field. Since coming to Hill, the colonel's career has now spanned the full gamut of the F-- 4 aircraft. Reflecting on it, he commented that "with us maintaining a peace such as we are right now, it looks like the F-- 4 will be with us into the next century, or into the late 1990s at least. were assigned to USAFE "In April 1966 when the first at Bitburg, I was assigned there both as a maintenance officer and as the maintenance control officer. "THAT WAS THE FIRST TIME I was exposed to F.-- and as the wing received them and built up their forces, I learned them there and how to maintain them! "I went from Bitburg in 1969 to Southeast Asia, again supI came back from SEA and went on to the Air porting After Air Staff, I went to the Staff, again working with Industrial College of the Armed Forces for a year, then to USAFE headquarters at Ramstein, Germany, where I was director of maintenance there. Again, the backbone of the aircraft force was the s. I think "I had left SAC in 1965, just before I went to or in the USAFE in here either wherever I've been, Germany, states, the one common thread of feeling the operational forces have is for the s and Ogden's integrity. "I THINK IF YOU TALK to the people in TAC and PACAF about their dealings with Ogden, they feel they can depend on this ALC for the product they receive. "The F-- 4 has a versatility of no other aircraft. But unless you know the history of it, you wonder why we did what we did. Air Defense Command originally bought the which was the original designation of the F-- It was scrapped. "The Navy said That's not all bad' and they bought it, redesignated it F-- 4 and used it in carrier defense. "The Air Force then saw what the Navy was doing with it and bought it for close air support. They then decided their interceptors needed help, so they slung a gunpod under the middle of it to use for combat. That's how the E .. y:':r'ry-h:&WmM- vyzyyxyy:yy 'y-- z : yyK C. C. F-4- 4s Col. Lewis G. Curtis F-4- s. F-4- s. F-4- F-4- s. F-4- A, 4. air-to-a- ir proved at this depot and purchased by the system manager here at this depot. "Many, many of the modifications that went on the F-- 4 to give them expanded combat capability were done either by teams here at Ogden or by teams contracted out through the Materiel Management people. "ONE OF THE MODIFICATIONS was called 'Rivet Alike,' 'Rivet' meaning any modification sponsored in the logistics community at Air Force. "Alike modification 2147 took the forward Sparrow stations on the F-- 4 and made them capable of carrying an ECM pod to protect the aircraft from detection by ground radars. "It also gave it capability to still fire Sparrow missiles so that it was a dual program project. It was applicable to all fighter versions of. the F--4 because there are no Sparrow missile wells on the RF-4It was one of the "Rivet Alike was not done to the RF-4our SEA were that aircraft able to protect ways during themselves from being shot at by SAMS. "OF COURSE, you have to have an aircraft formation with each aircraft carrying a pod in order to prevent detection properly, but it was a way that we came about quickly to solve the problem of SAMS shooting us down. "Now what we've done is incorporated this modification into the aircraft structure and eliminated using wiring going into the inboard pylons and strictly have it to the wiring going to the Sparrow wells. "What we have been doing the past three or four years here is taking out the old quick mod we had in there and putting in the proper permanent installation. 1 was working that project on the air staff. Now "In 1970-7here I am still working the project with the maintenance force here at Ogden actually doing the work. "THERE IS A PROGRAM called 'analytical condition inspection' (ACI) so some of our aircraft that come in for PDM come in both for PDM and ACI. Those are airframes whose fatigue,index and flying hours have been selected out of the computer by Materiel Management personnel. "On those aircraft, we do more of a PDM than the normal flow. Those are the ones we look at for a tell-tal- e sign. ; . . should we do more or less in this area . "We play the information of what we get off an ACI aircraft against the structural integrity program data that is continually fed from the field through the VGH recorders off the aircraft as they fly. "We bounce that information together, then change the PDM program based on that information and that saves us. It's very fluid, because we have bought modifications for structural beef up of the aircraft. "WILD WEASEL IS ONE of a few modifications of this complexity that the Air Force has performed in house, without to do it here. going to a contractor. It's more "TAC is the final recipient of the Wild Weasel, the aircraft that we are modifying from an E here at Ogden. "I think we are fortunate here at the Directorate of Maintenance at Hill that in the past year, although we've had trouble producing aircraft in PDM, we have been able to maintain the quality of the aircraft we produce. "Though we had structural problems causing us to produce aircraft behind schedule, our quality, the quality of our aircraft has steadily improved so that TAC, in their standardized maintenance acceptance checklist at each wing, when they receive an aircraft back at home station, has reduced their checklist from ten major steps to four. This is commendable to our people at Ogden. "HERE'S THE F-- 4 NOW, you might say in the 'twilight' of its service, being modified to yet another derivative, the of the basic aircraft, where it will be a replacement Wild Weasel for the and that, incidentally, is another modification I was working on in the Pentagon in 1971-7and here I am finalizing it now." "WE JUST USED the airframe that had a nose similar to the reconnaissance version, stuck the MO drum and gun in the inir areas that the cameras fit in and made it an terceptor with an internal gun during SEA. "I guess what we've done is made one airframe do all missions. We had to modify it of course, but we've also found out in SEA that making one airframe do all missions does limit the 0 you in some aspects. That's why we've gone to the and the air-to-a- F-1- 5, A-1- F-1- 6. "In essence, these three pick up a role that was formerly assigned totally to the F-- Yet no one has thought of anything so it is still our or an inexpensive way to replace the RF-4no tactical reconnaissance aircraft. There is replacement for RF-4the being bought at this time. 4. C, C THINK versatility was in the F-- 4 to begin with, but we sure built it in. We really built it in after we had it awhile. It was ingenuity on the part of the Air Force. We bought an airframe that was a close air support airframe, modified it to become a tactical reconnaissance aircraft. That's how you to the RF-4went from the "I DON'T F-4- C C. F-4- evolved. "Every bit of that adaptability had to be engineering ap- - 1, -- cost-effecti- ve F-4- G F-4- 'tXk - iim wH wfn 'ftp i F-4- G F-1- 05 2, ' i 'ZT i ztjr - 1 ' ' - "f ; -- maintenance worker sits in the center of a myriad of wiring. (U. S. Air Force Photo) A f t F-- 4 Wild Weasel Is yet another derivative of the fabulous Phantom. (U.S. Air Force Photo) F-4- C |