Keeping Team Dover Flying: One part at a time

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Zachary Cacicia
  • 436th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. --  The last Pontiac Bonneville rolled off a General Motors production line in 2005, depriving current Bonneville owners a source of new parts for their aging vehicles, without having to order expensive custom made components from fabricators. Correspondingly, Lockheed produced its last C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft in 1989, leaving the Air Force with a similar problem.

But there is no need to worry, for the Air Force has a solution to ensure that its mission is accomplished. In this case, the solution is the Airmen and civilians who work in the 436th Maintenance Squadron's Aircraft Metals Technology Shop.

"We're doing a job that nobody else in the Air Force can do," said Tech. Sgt. Stephen Radziewicz, 436th MXS assistant NCO in charge of metals technology. "We make the structural components that past manufactures stopped making, but the Air Force still needs."

In short, if an aircraft component breaks, warps, bends, deteriorates, weakens or in any other way needs to be repaired or replaced, the Aircraft Metals Technology Shop is there to either repair it or fabricate a replacement.

"If a part comes to us and we can't fix it, they have to order a whole new system," said Senior Airman Alexander Wilke, 436th MXS aircraft metals technician. "We keep the aircraft in the air."

The shop and its personnel mainly support Team Dover's C-5M Super Galaxies and C-17 Globemasters, but are often called upon to fix and produce parts for transient aircraft that fly into Dover AFB.

"Anything that lands at Dover that requires our expertise, we can fix," said Radziewicz.

Because of the essential work that they do, the shop's Airmen's quality of work is expected to be precise and accurate, whether it is in their shop, in the isochronal maintenance dock or out on the flight line.

"They are held to a higher standard," said Radziewicz. "A lot of our fabrication tolerances are about the thickness of a human hair."

The machinery that the shop uses to complete its mission ranges from lathes, mills and furnaces to high-tech water jet cutters that can cut through inches of steel and aluminum.

According to Radziewicz, the Airmen must first learn how to produce components by hand in order to better understand the process, before they are trained how to use the automated machinery.

"They can take a mechanical drawling and produce practically anything," said Senior Master Sgt. Eric Guest, 436th MXS fabrications flight superintendent.

With 25 years of Air Force fabrication experience under his belt, Guest believes the Airmen do not realize how important and far reaching their work is toward the greater worldwide Air Force mission.

"Our personnel don't get to see the far reaching impact of the work they do," said Guest. "Their day-to-day business affects as far as to the warfighters out in the [Areas of Responsibility]."

Overall, the mission that the eight Airmen, four Department of Defense civilians and the handful of contractors who make up the Aircraft Metals Technology Shop, is essential for the success of not only Team Dover's mission, but also the Air Force's mission-at-large.