Rescue Carrier Idea

[nev]

There was a similar tale in Vietnam about a Huey that had gone down and never been found. All the bent storemen in the area used to move stuff around to cover whoever was being audited and write off stuff that they couldn't cover to the crash. When the Army got wise and audited them all at once, the paperwork showed that there'd been about 19 tons of gear on that Huey: no wonder it crashed huh? 

If you read the excellent Phantom Over Vietnam, the author tells a similar story.  Every squadron had a hangar queen, but the big-wigs at Wing didn't like that, so they banned them.  The solution was for the airmen to start storing spare parts in their personal lockers.  Wing realised something was still up, so they decreed that every airframe on strength must fly once a month.

The authors squadron had 1 plane that by this time was an absolute shell.  In the end it flew 1 circuit of Da Nang with gear and flaps welded down, missing a canopy and who knows what else.  It was then diagnosed with a spurious, unfixable fault and shipped back the US for McDD to fix!

I've also read the Falklands story from a guy who was on Harriers in Germany at the time.  He said it was an absolute godsend during stock-checks as anything and everything was written off against it

[sandiego89]

My ATLANTIC CONVEYOR is ready for tasking!  Pehaps with a yard period to install some cranes and small boats to better support humanitarian and disaster relief operations. 

Agree that a container ship is a good place to start.  Airfix FEARLESS is also a good canditate- cheap and easy to find kit. 

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